Millers in mealie meal supply ultimatum

ALL millers getting subsidised maize from the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) under the tripartite agreement have been given a three-days ultimatum to flood the market with mealie-meal.

Lusaka Province Minister Bowman Lusambo said millers party to the agreement should flood the market with the commodity for customers to benefit from the arrangement.

Mr Lusambo claimed the artificial mealie meal shortage was caused by some unscrupulous people who were reselling the commodity after bulk buying.

The minister said this in Lusaka yesterday after a meeting with millers where he emphasized that the State would not allow people to be exploited when the country had enough maize stocks.

He said the mealie meal retail price should still be pegged between K136 and not K150 for a 25-kilogramme bag of breakfast meal.

He said millers should distribute the commodity in all the compounds in Lusaka Province and called on the residents not to cause panic buying because there was enough maize in stock.

He said Government will not allow unscrupulous business people to create artificial mealie-meal shortages and come up with exorbitant prices so as to exploit consumers.

Meanwhile the FRA has released 57,987 metric tonnes of white maize under the tripartite maize agreement with the millers Association of Zambia and Grain Traders Association of Zambia.

FRA Public Relations Coordinator, John Chipandwe said the maize released was out of 71,689.9 metric tonnes of maize that the agency was required to contribute to the tripartite agreement and the released quality was for March 13,

2020.