Africa-Press – Zambia. The New Heritage Party has demanded for the immediate dismissal of Agriculture Minister Rueben Mtolo and the entire top management team at the Ministry of Agriculture for alleged incompetence and corruption in the tendering process for the supply of fertilizer under the Farmer Input Support Programme-FISP.
The party has alleged that this has resulted into the failure by the ministry to distribute farming inputs especially fertilizer to farmers on time for the 2022/2023 farming season.
Party President Chishala Kateka has indicated that the UPND government found a system in place that was working for FISP and a tendering procedure, which even though not perfect, was working well enough to make Zambia a net exporter of grain and other agricultural produce.
She is concerned that instead of allowing the processes that were working to continue at least in the short term, they dismantled the entire structure of the support system especially for the vulnerable farmers and cancelled the legitimately acquired tenders that they found had already been awarded, preferring to single source and award the contracts to well-known friends of UPND high ranking officials. Agriculture Minister Rueben Mtolo could not give a comment by broadcast time as he was reportedly at a funeral.
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