Africa-Press – Zambia. FORMER Lusaka Province minister Bowman Lusambo has urged local government minister Gary Nkombo to seriously dialogue with mobile money service booth operators who have been caught up in the clean-up exercise being conducted in the central business district.
Lusambo told The Mast that he had personally called Nkombo to tell him that there was a likelihood that the affected people did not understand what the government wanted to do.
“I personally, yesterday [Sunday] engaged the Minister of Local Government Hon Gary Nkombo. I asked him to explain the rationale behind the exercise to remove booths for mobile service operators. He told me that ‘as a council, what we planned is we are going to remove people from Cha Cha Cha, Great East and Cairo roads and we are going to give these people specific trading areas until the [AU] Summit is over because we cannot remove them minus giving them an alternative place’. That is the answer which the minister gave to me and I told him that is the position which we also had when I was Lusaka Province minister,” he said. “I told him that the plan was not to use force to remove them from those areas. We actually agreed to engage these people and I hope and trust they have engaged them because the proposal was to engage with the mobile booth operators and the mobile service companies.” Lusambo said it was clear from the outcry on the streets by the affected people that they were not adequately engaged.
“But what is on the ground now is totally different. The problem I have seen is there was no proper engagement between the local government ministry and those people. Secondly those people are blank. They are saying they will give them alternative spaces. That has not been done. For example, there are booths shunted behind Post Office. Where are those people supposed to go? Are all of them going to be trading behind the Post Office? They don’t know. They would have provided the alternatives first and engage booth operators so that they agree,” he said. “What I have seen is the [Lusaka City] Council wants to come up with new measures of permanently removing booths using the Summit and they don’t know where to take them. Otherwise this issue should not even involve council police. There are mobile service operators; Zamtel, Airtel, and MTN which they would have engaged and engage also with the agents of these three. The data is there. By the time we were leaving office, we had more than 6,000 mobile money service operators.”
And Lusambo said he was disappointed with PF member and Lusaka mayor Chilando Chitangala who when she featured on Hot FM Radio said that the booths had mushroomed in undesignated areas because of caderism and lack of political will by the PF government to stop it.
“The issue at hand is not even about cadres. The issue at hand is about the AU Mid-term Summit. There was an agreement even when we were in office that the Cairo, Cha Cha Cha and Great East roads should be cleared because that is the face of our CBD from Kabwe Roundabout to Kafue Roundabout. And there was a hotel there. That Hotel was earmarked for accommodation for the delegates who will be coming to the AU during the summit. This is not an exercise that started today. The plan had been there earlier. The UPND government found that programme already and the programme was only for Cairo, Great East and Cha Cha Cha roads,” Lusambo said. “I even remember I and Chitangala as the deputy mayor then going there to encourage the institutions which had been operating in Great East Road up to the Airport Roundabout to start maintaining their areas so that we can beautify the Great East Road. We visited so many institutions and companies. So it is shocking that Chitangala who was deputy mayor then wants to start saying that there was no political will on the PF-led local authorities to regulate trading of mobile booth operators and insinuate that most of those that own booths were allowed to do so in undesignated areas by PF cadres. If it was the case of PF cadres, the council would have sorted out that issue.”
Lusambo said if the councils have failed to do their job they should not blame it on politicians. “The issue of cadres controlling business in undesignated areas is the issue of the council to sort out. The insinuation by the mayor who is also PF that there was no political will is neither here nor there. We gave political will to all councils. We didn’t even interfere. We were working with them and getting advice from them. If there is an issue of demolishing, we always used to engage the director of planning and director legal. I was moving with them because I wanted to give them the political will. I had no powers to demolish any structure or remove vendors as Lusaka Province minister. That is the work of councils. So it was shocking for Chitangala to say we are cleaning the CBD because now there is political will,” said Lusambo. “Operators first of all get a licence. So that issue of cadres is neither here or there. The council just failed to work. If the council failed to work, let them not blame it on a cadre because even today cadres are charging people trading in mobile money service something like K2,000.”
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