Africa-Press – Zambia. President Hakainde Hichilema’ failure to manage the agriculture sector has compromised food security in the country, says the Socialist Party. Party spokesperson FRANK BWALYA was reacting to government’s recent pronouncement that Zambia intends to import mealie meal from countries that import maize from Zambia.
Bwalya said the country is in trouble. He wondered how the same government informed the nation that millers in Zambia had bought maize at a cheap price from the Food Reserve Agency(FRA) was considering the option of importing mealie meal.
“This government said, recently, that Zambia had more than enough stocks of maize; and that the maize had been offloaded cheaply to millers. Therefore government constantly talked about why millers were selling mealie meal at a high price when they(millers) had bought cheap maize from FRA,” Bwalya said in a statement.
He further said that he saw no sense in the decision to import a maize finished product, mealie meal, from countries that actually do import maize from Zambia.
“The same government is now telling us that they want to import mealie meal from countries that are importing maize from Zambia! Does that make sense? It doesn’t!”, the Socialist Party spokesperson charged.
The skyrocketing price of mealie meal, which is Zambia’s staple food has left a bitter taste in a great many citizen’s mouths. In many parts of the Southern African country, not only is mealie meal unaffordable but is outrightly absent from the shelves of sellers.
The Socialist Party is of the view that Hakainde Hichilema’s mismanagement of the agriculture sector is the root cause of food insecurity in the nation. According to experts Zambia is staring at a looming famine due to the United Party for National Development (UPND)’s failure to deliver farming inputs on time in the just ended farming season.
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