GOV’T KILLING PRIVATE MILLING COMPANIES - GBM
Previous governments had worked with traditional private milling companies which understand the market and the pricing of the mealie meal.
I know that by engaging ZNS with its selected and preferred companies, government thought those few favoured companies were going to cover the entire country.
But these small milling companies have no capacity and that is why we are now having perennial shortages of the commodity,” Mr Mwamba said.
He said it was lack of proper planning on the part of government that had resulted into Zambians to regrettably begin to queue for mealie meal even when the country had enough maize and mealie meal to feed citizens.
Mr Mwamba has warned that if the UPND government was not going to handle the challenge of mealie meal properly, there was a real danger that the country shall continue to experience perennial shortages of the commodity which was essentially going to continue escalating the price of the commodity.
“These people who are in power think governments operate in isolation and that is why they have completely failed. We should not be having mealie meal shortages in this day and era. Let Government allow private milling companies to fully participate in this industry because they understand the markets better than those in government. Private millers have their presence across the country and cannot be compared to the few favoured companies which have been engaged by this government. Let them dispense with the pride of knowing it all and they will be helped,” Mr Mwamba said.