The Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) has commenced the gradual deactivation timeline for more than 10 Simcards registered under one National Registration Card.

Addressing the media in Lusaka this morning, Acting ZICTA Director General Mwenya Mutale said that under this exercise, the authority is expected to clean up half a million Simcards which did not follow the directive of not having more than 10 Simcards per person without justification.

Mr. Mutale explained that during this period, Simcards that may not be compliant will have their outgoing call services suspended but will be able to receive incoming calls, adding that by 14th February 2022, non-compliant Simcards will have all their calling rights suspended as they will not be able to receive or make calls.

Mr. Mutale said that once this is done, subscribers will have 14 days from commencement of service suspension to claim their deactivated Simcards and is urging all subscribers to check the status of their Simcard registration by dialing *101# and regularize any anomalies immediately to avoid any inconveniences or losing their number.

On January 21st, 2022, the authority announced a 7-day ultimatum to all subscribers with non-compliant Simcard registration details to regularize their registration before January 28th, 2022.

The Ministry of Community Development and Social Services has urged beneficiaries under the Food Security Pack (FSP) to stop resisting being weaned off from the programme when it’s time for them to graduate.

Chief Community Development Officer Nicholas Banda has said that Food Security Pack is designed to graduate beneficiaries after two years of being on the programme and are able to stand on their own.

Mr Banda said that beneficiaries should understand that once they have been supported and are able to stand on their own, they need to leave room for other vulnerable but viable members of communities to be supported and that the FSP programme can only take a limited number of beneficiaries depending on available resources and the spaces left by those that graduate.

Mr Banda said this during the monitoring of some Food Security Pack activities in selected districts of Northern Province where reports indicated that some beneficiaries resist graduating from the programme.

And Luwingu District Community Development Officer Serah Banda said that officers face a lot of resistance from beneficiaries when it’s time to wean them off from the programme.

Ms Banda said there is a need for increased sensitisation for FSP beneficiaries to understand the importance of graduating from the programme to allow more vulnerable but viable people to be supported.

And Acting Kasama District Community Development Officer Mutinta Himunza said even collecting recoveries becomes a serious challenge when beneficiaries know that they are graduating from the programme.

Ms Himunza said most beneficiaries don’t want to pay back when it is their final year to be on Food Security Pack (FSP).

He added that the public sector, on the other hand, will continue to play the role of providing the requisite infrastructure and a conducive business regulatory environment which is critical for the private sector to effectively contribute to national development.

Minister of Infrastructure, Housing Urban and Development Charles Lubasi Milupi has announced that Zambia’s housing units deficit is expected to double in the next eight years.

Eng. Milupi said the current 1.5 million housing unit’s deficit is expected to rise to three million units by 2030.

Featuring on ZNBC TV’s Sunday Interview, Mr. Milupi bemoaned the substandard of some houses, especially in remote areas.

He said there is a need to come up with standard designs of houses that can be used even in rural houses to enable more houses to have access to electricity.

“Infrastructure is key to development; you need the right type of infrastructure to ensure that business carries on unimpeded. You know the size of our country is very big with a fairly low population of 18 Million. What this entails is that we have communities all over the place, districts all over the place that need to be connected over this wide country in terms of the area,” Mr. Milupi said.

“In terms of housing you are quite right that currently we have a deficit of 1.5 million housing units and we think that by 2030 which is eight years from now this will rise to 3 million units. This is with the urban housing and peri-urban housing. That is why we have that deficit but if you look right across our country in the rural setting up in the villages and so on. The standard of some houses in certain villages are such that I think we need to expand our vision in terms of what we have to do with housing.”

“The Covid pandemic has brought out certain issues of requiring E-learning for example for pupils and students and so also on. Just imagine those who are in remote village housing which is just mud and poll and grass just thrown as a roof and so on. You cannot even if you intended to have off grid solar electricity provided to such houses so that children like that can also access e-learning. So as we expand we need to address even more than the official deficit that I have talked about. We need to come up with standard designs of houses that can be used even in rural houses so that when need be those houses have access to electricity off grid electricity and they can have the mechanism,” Mr. Milupi said.

He said the Ministry of Infrastructure, Housing Urban and Development has already started formulating affordable standard housing unit designs for both rural and urban areas.

“We have been five months in power now or in office, our country has been Independent since 1964 but there isn’t a suitable time to say maybe we need to wait so the mechanism has already started to begin to address. We have people who deal with these matters in our ministry who have already been tasked to look at certain designs in addition to standard designs for teachers housing in schools especially in remote schools, nurses housing and clinical officers housing in remote places,” Mr. Milupi said.

“The overriding desire is to come up with costs that are affordable both to the Government when we build these infrastructures and in terms of these housing units that I am talking about for villages that are affordable to villagers. We are not going to pay for those but I think it will serve us right as a country if we say you want to build a house, here is a standard design which is affordable and should be able to put it up knowing well that children that grow up in that homestead will have access to basic amenities,” he added.

On road infrastructure, Mr. Milupi reiterated that the Government will be undertaking Public Private Partnership (PPP) to construct roads in areas that are commercially viable.

He emphasized the need for the public to differentiate between commercial viability for PPP and economic viability of areas.

Mr. Milupi added that infrastructure such as roads and houses must be constructed following right pricing, right standard and right duration.

“We are talking about PPP attracting investors to come in and construct roads. This country is big. There are many roads all over the place. Districts that are not connected, right now I am getting videos for example the Samfya-Kasaba Road that is going into Chifunabuli going to pass Lubwa Mission. There is a terrible thing there, the road is cut off,” he said.

Mr. Milupi repeated that the much talked about Chipata-Vubwi /Chipata-Chadiza Road is not commercially viable saying PPP cannot work but the central Government needs to find money to improve the road.

Copperbelt-based civil society organization called Break the Silence says Zambia needs to scale up the fight against corruption because people involved in the scourge are getting more sophisticated.

Break the Silence Chief Executive Director Richard Mweetwa has charged that corruption has gotten entrenched in all spheres of the nation.

Mr. Mweetwa expressed shock that some public officers want bribes to offer services such as acquisition of school places or an appointment with a medical doctor.

He said Break the Silence was aware that some teachers in selected schools were soliciting for bribes from parents seeking school places.

Mr. Mweetwa said the fight against corruption should not be mainly focused on politicians but the private and public sectors as well.

“The fight against corruption should not only concentrate on politicians but on all governance systems both in private and public offices in all the districts of Zambia. It has come to our attention that corruption is in almost all institutions, even as low as the registry’s personnel of different institutions, human resource officers etc,” Mr. Mweetwa said.

“We have observed situations where: If you want a transfer or a pay vacancy or to be upgraded. Worst still, to be promoted you have to bribe someone to get what you want. Things should not be like that. We therefore call upon the Anti Corruption Commission, Drug Enforcement Commission, The Police, intelligence officers to be vigilant and we call on citizens to report such activities to relevant offices,” he said.

“Under the previous PF regime, promoting workers, transferring workers and retiring workers in national interest was based on tribal lines, political attachment and corruption was the order of the day. We thank the New Dawn Government for restoring professionalism and for allowing those who were fired or retired under such grounds to be reinstated. We also demand that the Civil Servants in government and in Palastatal should be restructured because a lot of incompetent people were promoted based on the above reasons like corruption, we want qualified people in their right positions without any strings attached,” Mr. Mweetwa said.

Mr. Mweetwa said citizens should help the Government fight corruption by reporting suspected corrupt practices to law enforcement agencies.

“Corruption is a cancer which is getting more sophisticated by the people involved and therefore it must be curbed. We would like to urge the citizens to help the government with the fight on corruption. We also urge the government to put up strong measures when employing people, or promoting workers, transferring them to avoid people being transferred on political or tribal grounds like we witnessed in the previous PF regime,” he said.

Mr. Mweetwa further called for the prosecution of people who were repeatedly cited in the Auditor General’s report, Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) Financial Intelligence Center (FIC) reports for misappropriating public funds.

“Break the Silence organization is proposing the following ideals to the government: Institutions and individuals cited by the Auditor General’s report, Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) Financial Intelligence Center (FIC) should be brought to book, investigated, suspended, fined and fired if found wanting. We are tired of hearing the same reports involving the same people year in year out without any action. We demand proactive and affirmative action by the government,” he said.

Mr. Mweetwa added:”We propose that the Anti Corruption Commission offices should be decentralized and should be found in all districts of this country so that citizens should be free and encouraged to report corruption cases taking place in different institutions of both public and the private sector unlike it is whereby they are only found in provincial centers or some towns like Kitwe on the Copperbelt. We demand that officers engaged in corruption should be fired to deter others from committing the same crime. We suggest that anti-corruption integrated committees be set in all institutions composed of different people of integrity to look at issues of employment, transfers, and promotions in order to avoid corruption.”

Over 1000 displaced traders, bus and taxi drivers at Masala Market in Ndola on the Copperbelt this morning staged a protest demanding the government`s intervention in the alleged sale of a piece of land at the market to a foreign national.

The aggrieved traders vandalized the said premises vowing not to allow the alleged owner to commence with construction works.

The traders do not want the said development to continue stating that they do not have anywhere to trade from following the gutting of Kapalala market.

They later stormed the Ndola District Commissioner Joseph Phiri’s office who promised to engage the council and give them a favorable response before the end of the day.

And Ndola City Council Public Relations Manager Rebecca Mushota says the local authority will counter check the documentation that the developer has.

Meanwhile, UPND Ndola District Spokesperson David Zimba who addressed the traders says the party in the district will stand and support what they want.

But when contacted, the alleged owner of the said land Aziz Adams referred all queries to his lawyer.

Meanwhile, calls to modernize Chisokone market that have in the past met resistance from marketeers have resurfaced with the Alliance for Zambia Informal Economy Association-AZIEA- urging the new dawn administration to consider resuming these plans.

AZIEA General Secretary Lameck Kashiwa has however proposed that this is done in full consultation with the marketeers to avoid the confusion and misunderstandings that occurred previously leading to the project failing to take off.

The umbrella organization for associations of informal worker organizations says marketeers and other informal sector workers were apprehensive about modernization of Chisokone as they were not consulted and only learnt that mopani copper mines had provided funding for the undertaking through the media leading to speculations that they would be displaced by foreigners.

In 2018, the then Local Government and Housing Minister Vincent Mwale announced that the chamber of mines was ready to finance the construction of a modernized Chisokone market, an announcement that was met with huge resistance by traders after reports alleged that the land had been sold to Chinese investors.