President Levy Mwanawasa has sacked deputy Lands Minister, a close relative, in a corruption crackdown aimed at stopping illegal allocation of housing plots, a presidential aide said on Monday.
Deputy Lands Minister Moses Muteteka, who is married to a niece of Mwanawasa’s wife Maureen, was sacked over allegations of illegal allocation of housing plots, press spokesperson David Kombe said.
“President Mwanawasa has with immediate effect relieved deputy Minister of Lands Moses Muteteka of his duties. This is to allow the ongoing investigations for his role in corrupt practices in the allocation of land,” Kombe said in a statement.
Three weeks ago, Mwanawasa sacked Lands Minister Gladys Nyirongo for allegedly allocating eight plots to her family amid accusations of corruption in the award of plots by some senior officials in the ministry.
Several senior officials in the Ministry of Lands have been suspended in the corruption crackdown.
This month, police joined Lusaka city council workers to demolish houses built in high density Lusaka suburbs without the authority of the council.
The demolitions continued at the weekend and spread to other towns.
Some residents have said they will seek compensation from the government for demolishing their houses, but no legal case has been taken to the courts so far.
Mwanawasa, who has been accused by the opposition of allegedly offering government jobs to friends and family members, vowed in February that he would not spare anyone in the fight against corruption because his campaign to rid Zambia of graft was being hampered by civil servants.
Muteteka, who served as a Mwanawasa senior private secretary prior to the 2006 presidential elections, is a ruling party legislator representing an area near Mwanawasa’s home district in central Zambia.
Well well well, interesting. I must say that is a bold move Mr President. Well done and keep it up. I hope the madam keeps cooking you those nice meals. I wont ask how this guy got the job in the first place. Don’t worry we know and we wont roast you over it. We are all human. The bottom line is he abused your kindness and he is now out and the rest as they say is history..hope you have learnt something on this one.
Thankyou Mr president. I think once you appoint a relative you can as well inform us that you have done so rather than when you just fire.
Finally we are seeing Levy’s fight against corruptiion as a reality. Though he almost lost integrity when he tried to shield Bulaya. However, Levy, how come you are still keeping Mabenga in your ranks? He is a convicted felon according to the Supreme Court. You don’t respect their decision to have him caged. Do this for the people of Zambia who are greater than your cadres singing praises for you now but will just as soon insult you when you leave office. I also urge you to create structures that will curb this ugly vice. I mean, structures like, paying Civil servants well as you do the MPs. And next time you decide to appoint someone in cabinet or as d/minister, look at the qualifications. Don’t appoint people bcoz they sing your praises or are related to you somehow. We are all related to you coz we are indeginous Zambians and you are the “father of the nation”. Cheerio Levy. Say hi to Maureen and the kids for me.
mwinepabo you talk too much. You mean you don’t have any senseble to comment apart from uttering these words
People, people cant you see that this is a delibarate move, he did this just to try to coverup for many corruption acts he has done! you mean he has just realised!!!
Hi ba Kafula. What is “senseble” Ba mudala? I checked three different editions of english dictionaries and I couldn’t find the word. Did you want to say sensible? Any way it depends on which school you went to because these days there are also some mickey mouse colleges around. Bye and dont forget that I love you.
Hi Kafula and Mwinepabo,
You two guys please bring sensible issues to the growth of our national.I would like to ask my beloved President, When you employ a relative is it not corruption or abuse of authority or of office?. Beloved Zambians if you could check our cabinat ministers 75% are Levy’s relatives and his wife.The permanent secretaries most of them are his relatives even those sent to mission abroad most of the are related to him and his wife.If you employ a relative is it not corruption please advise me.
It actually shows that most of these positions are not needed, but just a drain on the govt coffers to please relatives and friends. I doubt if Levy was a national team coach he would field a line-up of relatives. He just wouldn’t because those team positions require the best players you can get to create a wining team and if he fielded relatives the results would be such a disaster and FAZ would fire him in no time. He can manage to do that in our government because those positions are just irrelevant. Why not just scrap them and have a team that we really need and we field the best people for the job and we wont have these preachers who once given power they throw away the bible and loot the nation. The president has just too many people he appoints. Let us have people occupy positions on merit. And Mudala, I must say yes the system is corrupt and Levy & Kunda perpetuates it and he is corrupt too. After 2011 get him for office abuse
First Nyirongo, whom I thought to be as arrogant as Nalumango, then this corrupt scoundrel; well done Mr. President. These are clearly extraordinary levels of avarice that must be quelled before they raise our nation to cinders. Further strengthening of institutional capacities may reduce our dependence on the benevolence of the head of state in this fight. Once again, well done.
well done Mwinepabo,it least u are doing fine in correcting my English.i may consider u as personal assistant. i did standard five. i need a vibrant young
man. i see potential in u. go get your CV at misis basic school.
Before i pass my comment let me start by giving my observation. When we were young our parents used to teach us to work hard and ofcourse not to betray our country but nowadays things are different,that’s from my observation, parents this time are teaching there children not to work hard, because they have reserved places for then in their working places, but to think first about themselves then their families, close friends etc and their country last.One might overlook my observation but believe me i know what i’m talking about.The funny thing is that everytime i tyr to to advise children ie working hard towards their school i get to get almost the same answer,”me my father is Mr that, i dont need good grades, all i need is to finish school and i’ll be Mr that jr”.And i petty Mr noboby who regardless of his good grades,ends up being a clerk or maid in Mr that jr’s house.It’s high time we enbraced the system were people should be employed on merit not because of Mr that.
Sorry for the continuation but my point has to be stretched.Our nation is not a laboratory were people who last for power or have Mr that shuold go and experiment their ledership qualities.If Mr that want’s to do something for his siblings there many ways,eg by starting businesses for them,but our precious nation is definately not one of them.No wonder our nation is being ruined.They say standing in the garage doesn’t make you to be a car,the same goes for Mr that however a good leader he might be it doesn’t mean that his siblings posses his qualities.One might, employing relatives is wrong? The answer is no if they are qualified and yes if vice versa.Let us get back to our roots,just as our parents tought us to word hard and not to betray our nation regardless of what we are offered,let us do the same for our children to avoid this event from perpetuating.They say a bird in your hands is better than two in the bush.Our forefathers did’nt destroy Zambia for us,so we mustn’t.
Me i will not get tired talking about this Government.Take for instance,some of the depute ministers are very rude both in office and in parliament just because the chaps are related to mwanawasa and one would wonder where they are geting all that power from not knowing its from mwanawasa.
My opinion over matters concerning the Zambian president is that he is alos human and therefore needs encouragement by praise where praise is due and counsel where counsel is due. There has just to be some balance if we could qualify to be called sane! If he is not encouraged, that position can be lonely among the over 11million Zambians I tell you! besides how can we develop if we are not participating as citizens and subjects. I personally thank the president for his continued fight against corruption in Zambia. Whta may seem “a drop in the ocean” of all his efforts against the graft, one day will be “a big pond” in size! May the Lord help him to rule Zambia with increased wisdom and fairness!
May be Henry is related to mwanawasa so he wants to over stay in Canada.My dear we are the people who voted for him and you may not be a voter in the first place, you dont even know what problems zambians are facing.
I watched a program the other night on the pathetic ZNBC channel, where the task force on corruption displayed all the recovered earthly spoils of various scoundrels and I mustn’t hesitate to say that I was quite overwhelmed. If you can’t fault the thieving vagabonds, at least you should admire their tenacity in pursuit of the good life. However we as Zambians must go a step further in mimicking their resolve, of course in a more acceptable direction. One Zambia! One Nation. Nati one Zambia imwe!
One Nation is my response. During Kaunda’s time there wer six evils he used to talk about and one of them was nepotisim. what everybody has been talking abut is nepotism and I strongly beleive it is ilegal and should be stopped. If it is true that over 75% of appointments are to relatives then we have a problem, but the question is how many of these people are performing and how many were appointed because of their qualifications? we can cast aspersions on the President but we shuold also look and see what steps are being taken to rid this country of ours from corruption. Remember corruption is a crime committed by two people and is very difficult to prove unless the other person reveals. So the battle is big but we can all play our part. How many times have we seen a wrong thing being done and we have looked the other way. If we can count one event then let us know that we contributed to corruption. SO let us build our one Zambia one nation.
Thank you very much Mr.President Sir for putting your words into action.May the Almighty help you in this fight against corruption!
Sounds Great. Though appointing people on family grounds is also some sort of corruption. It looks like Mr President is on the right track, though a lot has to be done still. The government is still having a lot untrusted and unqualified people. Hope you will do more to it. Its we Zambians who can make Zambia a better and safer place to live.
Mr President ,what has been done at Ministry of Lands has been long overdue.My question to your Mr President , why should it take your hand to move things? What is the use of the responsible bodies like ACC/CID etc? This kind of operation is retrogressive because as a Head of state you have better things to take care of likes of quality job creation, poverty eradiction mechanisms , sovereignity preservation. What we need is strong regulation and strong civil participation in the running of the country if such vices are to be rid off.Corruption at Ministry of lands has been in existence since Kaunda error and if fairness has to prevail , the whole thing must be revisited since time in memorial
You are right Chilumba. How does it have to take the president to get things done. No wonder there is so much corruption in Zambia now because the civil servants know that the only guy is who is mouthy about corruption is the president and he cant be in more than one place at the same time. Mr president please delegate some powers to other organs. This is not a one man fight..you just can’t do it alone
if it were president Bush having taken this step that Mwanawasa has taken,God knows how many praises he would have received.Give credit where it is due
The president is just window dressing and using his “mini relatives” as sacrificial lambs. If he really means business……stop paying govt ministers/MPs heft salaries/gratuties and pay our nurses and teachers who have a big effect on our daily lives.
Task force must now demand international banks including off-shore instituitions to return all monies that belong to the Zambian people. These thieves have a complex network and requires international co-operation from law agencies. Should these thieves not be charged for crime against humanity. Surely, it’s quite simple to determine the number of deaths due to lack of water, medicines, medical facilities, education, basic housing, transport, the list goes on. We are talking 43 years of mis-management, corruption and gross neglegence.
Has anyone sited Chungu, Kabwe, Shanshonga…..please add to this list