Mbala Chambers of Commerce and Industry has petitioned the Food Reserved Agency (FRA) over delayed payments to local Transporters who werecontracted to ferry maize from different buying centers to Omnia depot
Chambers of Commerce and Industry Chairman Peter Mutale told ZANIS today that local Transporters heavily invested their meagre resources in the exercise with hope tobeing paid immediately the exercise came to an end. He regretted that it had taken five months without FRA fulfilling its Obligation
Mr Mutale bemoaned that other transporters who worked alongside Mbala based
transporters have already been paid.
He said the delay has raised a lot of suspicion among the transporters claiming that
he had irrefutable evidence to prove that the vehicles used by transporters from
outside Mbala district who have already been paid belonged to Mbala senior
officials.
In a petition made available to ZANIS the Food Reserved Agency has been given a
two-week ultimatum to liquidate debt owed to local transporters adding that the
delay has negatively impacted on their operations.
With all these problems, no one can blame many of us economists for wondering about the very relevance of FRA. What can’t we buy fertiliser, maize like we buy clothes, mealie meal and anything else. The most ridiculous argument you are likely to hear is that maize is a staple food and poor farmers will suffer. There’s no argument in favour of such institutions that has not been demolished by logic-and the performance of FRA just makes a mockery of even the most sympathetic proponent.
Has anyone looked at the cost (to the tax payer) of running the FRA enterprise in relation to the total maize (well, add any other commodity) economy in Zambia? It just shocks me we still tolerate such 19th century incompetence with all the cheap technology. If the MAFF has any hand on using GIS/GPS with operations research why do we need all this bizzare waste going on?