SLEEPING LUSAKA MAYOR COUNSELLED

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 10:34:26 +0000

By EDWARD MWANGO

FORMER Lusaka Mayor, Daniel Chisenga has urged his successor Wilson Kalumba to take President Lungu’s observation that Lusaka City Council (LCC), had gone to sleep to stop cholera as a wakeup call.

Mr Chisenga said it was unfortunate that LCC- and the Ministry of Local Government and Housing, had to wait for the President to do their work.

“As ex-Mayor of Lusaka we did what we could to halt cholera cases. I also recall recently how some PF cadres took it upon themselves to clean some parts of the city on their own initiative.

“So for me I think LCC and the Ministry of Local Government and Housing should have done this before the President came in,” Mr. Chisenga said in an interview.

He advised Mr Kalumba to engage Lusaka residents on keeping the city clean and stressed the need for other local authorities in Zambia to learn lessons from the LCC case and not fold their arms in comfort.

He however appealed to Lusaka residents not to judge Mr Kalumba as he had only served a year.

The former Lusaka Mayor also praised President Lungu for his bold decision to involve defence  forces with LCC and the Ministry of Health to halt cholera, which has so far claimed 41 lives since it broke out on October 6, 2017.

Inspecting the cleaning exercise in the central business district of Lusaka, President Lungu said the LCC and the Ministry of Local Government and Housing had gone to sleep as they allowed markets and other trading areas to continue operating in filthy surroundings.

He said the Local authority had allowed sanitary infrastructure to be overwhelmed by unplanned structures despite government spending massive sums of money on upgrading infrastructure to modern standards.