Africa-Press – Zambia. Patriotic Front (PF) Member of the Central Committee Emmanuel Mwamba has said President Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND administration have been a great disappointment in Government. And Ambassador Mwamba said the New Dawn government prematurely celebrated the IMF deal that is yet to bear fruits.
Featuring on Radio Christian Voice’s Chat Back Show, Ambassador Mwamba, the PF Presidential aspirant, said President Hichilema’s New Dawn Government has failed to revive the economy and to create jobs.
The former envoy to the African Union (AU) said he expected the UPND Government to ride on the achievements of past governments to take Zambia to great heights
Amb. Mwamba said President Hichilema seems not to be learning from the past six heads of state. He bemoaned lack of adequate money in circulation and Government’s failure to pay contractors and suppliers of various goods plus services to the state.
“I have always stated that the UPND and its leader President Hakainde Hichilema, who is now our Head of State, should have had an easy ride because the President has six former Presidents to learn from and pick lessons from. He is coming from an election that took place one year, four months ago where he must have understood the needs of Zambians, the demand of Zambians, the aspirations of Zambians and the hopes of Zambians. Therefore it should become very easy to craft policies, and implement programmes that then fulfill those aspirations and hopes of Zambia but what we have seen is a great disappointment. First of all, we have an economic crisis that this country is facing. It can be traced back to 2015 when we had the worst drought in the last 30 years. Then we had subsequent droughts in 2017 and 2019. These affected our energy and we had an energy crisis, we had load shedding during this period,” Amb. Mwamba said.
“However, for Zambia by 2021 we saw that the economy was coming out of its recession and was beginning to boom. On the part of the Patriotic Front, after reflecting for ten years that they had invested in infrastructural development, they crafted another ten plan and amongst it was the economic recovery plan because of what the economy had received and the battering that the economy had received. So, there was this ambitious economic programme that was done but it affected the economy. Job creation was affected, job retention was affected, the economy itself was affected and the cost of living was quite high. That is one of the reasons the PF lost elections (2021). Remember the young people were saying we want jobs, we want education opportunities, we want entrepreneurship opportunities and the young people who came to register were soaring up and they voted for the opposition (UPND),” he continued. Amb. Mwamba explained why he thinks the UPND’s New Dawn government has been a great disappointment in power.
“So why a great disappointment? Is that the new government has failed to craft an economic plan like the PF done. The new government is relying on the 8th National Development Plan, documented by the Patriotic Front, at the final stage of the draft and they just completed and launched it. Nothing much has changed. We don’t see the ambition to attend to the economy. What is the crisis of the economy? We are debt distressed; we have a huge foreign debt of up to $13 Billion. This is for government-owned debt and we have state owned enterprises that own I think about another $2.3 Billion. The new government celebrated prematurely that they had clinched the IMF (International Monetary Fund) deal but the IMF deal was conditional. There are certain things that this government has to do. First, it is tied to debt restructuring, a matter that is underway. There is a credit committee that is doing that. It is also tied to certain reforms in the economy, the issue of the wage bill, it is one of the highest in Africa where you have up to 53% of the domestic revenue being spent on paying civil servants,” Amb. Mwamba said.
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