Distributors and traders in the banned alcohol sachets commonly known as Tujiljili yesterday staged a protest at the Patriotic Front secretariat calling on government to lift the ban.
The protesters who carried banners say they have lost jobs and called on government to lift the ban.
They said they have huge stokes of alcohol which they cannot sale anymore and they have lost their capital because of the ban.
But chief government spokesperson Fackson Shamenda says government will not tolerate the lawlessness by citizens who opt to protest as a way of airing their grievances.
Mr. Shamenda says government is open for dialogue with distributors and traders in tujilijili so that they can find a lasting solution to the lost jobs and capital investment.
Mr. Shamenda has called on the distributors to come forward and dialogue if their grievances are over job losses and business investment.
ZNBC
These things are killing people then you call it business!!! Thats blood money!!! Maybe the GRZ can consider to compasate all the traders and distributors but not to lift the burn,lets venture in something else… imwe bantu
Shamenda, peaceful protests by law abiding citizens is a constitutional right to air grievances and does not amount to lawlessness. Did you want them to pee on your unkempt beards for them to deliver their message?
There are so many things in Zambia that cause needless deaths everyday and tujilijili do not rank among these.
Our roads are among those in the top bracket. Driving on unmarked, undivided lanes on the resurfaced Zambian roads is a chilling experience with heavy trucks taking up most of the space since there is no railway system worth talking about.
Please make these roads safe by creating dual carriage ways from Chililabombwe to livingstone with all other towns in between. The only safe road in Zambia is the dual carriage between Kitwe & Ndola. The rest are death traps
Hear,hear!The death toll on those roads will soon,if not already,surpass AIDS/HIV related deaths.
Stupid youths! Those things are destroying people. How shameful!
This is what we were saying, you just cant ban with immediate effect, they should have given it time for stocks to be depleted.. A lot of capital will be lost or has been lost as a result of ban not to mention jobs
The fact that they went to pf secretariat whe nkandu luo is not found shows how bad the alcoho is. Just get over it and found something else to do
Let them distribute n trade something else that is worth life saving. No compensation, hw many lives lost due to tujilijili hav they compensated?
Which jobs have been lost? Govt shud be commended for banning these killer social lubricants.
It is a Nanny state.
Why doesn’t Nkandu Luo ban mini skirts?
Ganja is better than tujilijili, yet ganja is illegal. Nobody ever smoked ganja and started beating a wife or being generally a public nuisance, unless they smoked ganja and used alcohol at the same time. Those call boys who smoke ganja in public are also high on alcohol. Legalize ganja and keep the tujilijilis banned. Otherwise, if you don’t want to legalize ganja, keep the tujilijilis banned anyway.
I think this issue has not been handled well. The best they should have done is to give convincing reasons for the ban and hopefully help the businesses move on to other means and ways of plying their trade. Any right thinking person would know that ultimatums like these have got a profound effect on the people directly involved. Dialogue should have been the first step.
Some of you dont analyse issues. Even when govt is right you dont appreciate. Dual carrage ways ar e not a solution to most accidents and as for this bad beer a stop is the best. No need for grace peroide. The buisness is just bad.
So outline your analysis then,what major issue can be attributed to the sky-high death toll on our roads?Tyre blowouts?Unroad worthy vehicles?Human error?….Dual carriageways coupled with stiffer sentences for traffic offences will,I assure you cut road deaths by more than half!Simpler enforcements like wearing seat-belts at all times,no overloading and random checks of vehicles service history are all able to bring those accident numbers down further.Drink-driving is a major scourge on our roads and should carry a sentence similar to man-slaughter….because you turn your vehicle into a dangerous weapon when intoxicated.
@Shaka, hehehehe, What convincing reasons do you want other than the cause of death of many people in Zambia both young and old over that alcohol. Lets not be too political even on things that involve lives. Instead the govt should just find a way of helping all those who were in that business so that their families do not starve. And sometimes good govts need to make unpopular decisions as long as the decision can safeguard the lives of the masses in the long run.
@8 The Equalizer
Jah keep en bles yu fe ya courage. Dem bald heads wanna kil mea holy herb. Who giv dem power to do dat. Me tel em no. Stop de sachets en legalize the herb. Herb is mea medicine fe trachoma en asthma.
people are dieyn and foolish as you are you are sayn it should not be banned wait until it kills one relative of yours.
The govt that made you drunk with the same rubbish so that you vote for them has once again betrayed. Hard luck! Now you the meaning of the evil slogan of donchikubeba.
Good or bad, the business of jilis like any other should be treated as a business. GRZ should have sat down with producers and come up with a roadmap. The fact that producers approached PF offices (bad move! they should have approached grz!) means they are ready for dialogue.
Lagers and cigarettes kill people daily but even grz is not stupld enough to just ban them overnight, they’d have to give some sort of grace period. The fact that lagers are brewed by foreigners prevents grz from taking any action, but jilis are locally brewed. We can’t have rich locals! Only foreigners can benefit from pain.
How are jilis different from Nikolai, Johnny Walker, etc?
Tujilijili should not be tolerated, they are so bad and kill most poor Zambians, such investment is not worth negotiations, and Traders of the Cheap GIN don’t even drink it themselves. Sorry, invest in other better Businesses than this Nonsense.
All the Tujilijili company has to do is diversify actually change their business by now producing soft drinks rather than alcohol. If they want to produce tujilijili they should make something better like Whisky or something.
Can somebody enlighten me on the real reason behind the ban? What I would like to hear is say ” How many people died a a result of taking the liquor or what are the health risks associated with taking the stuff”. At the same time, I believe the authorities that gave the licence to the manufacturers must have done their homework. In the absence of such information anyone can wake-up one day and ban other popular local brews like Mosi.
lift the ban only on one condition,bring back those who died from tujilijili then you and then make your product less strong then you have your business back.oh one more thing when someone dies of tujilis you buy everything that is needed for the funeral right.
@ No. Maikalange. What roadmap, my foot! Did we not all see the effects of these tujilijilis surely? What more convincing reasons do we want? And the biggest problem is that these notorious sachets were so easy to buy because they are (I mean they were) so cheap. If an adult gets himself drank and dies (no matter how or why), at least you know they made that decision to get that drunk as an adult. The same cannot be said of the youngsters affected by this infamous brand called utujilijili. Kumfwa fye ne shina, lol!! Epo mpelele.
theres no need for dialogue..nonsense..just ban!! you may as well dialogue with the prostitutes kanshi!
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED PF IN TO POWER JUST TO BE FRANK THE SO CALLED KAPONYAS, LETS NOT TREAT THEM THAT WAY LOL 2015