Fri, 01 Sep 2017 12:57:37 +0000
By Kalobwe Bwalya
VICE-PRESIDENT Inonge Wina says there is urgent need to set up systems that will address issues of law and order in all markets throughout the country because the current running of the markets needed to be addressed seriously.
Ms Wina said fires at markets across the country had taught us many lessons, hence the need to build better markets that were fire resistant as well as environmentally friendly.
Speaking when she received donations from National Milling Company, Zambeef, Trade Kings and Radio Christian Voice in Lusaka yesterday towards the victims of Lusaka’s City Market, Ms Wina said there was need to address the management of the markets as Government strives to partner with the private sector in building better markets.
She said there was need to guarantee that the management of the markets would be functional and water tight, so that there are no other interested shareholders coming illegally to try to run the markets.
Ms Wina said Government will ensure that the partnership between the local councils and the developers of the markets would get a fair share of the contributions that they would get from the markets.
“We want to ensure that there is a system of sustained tenure for the marketers because they will be allocated on the space to trade from so that the issue of middle men and other interested, unauthorised stakeholders would be addressed.” said Ms Wina. She is pleased that the private sector had continued rendering support to the government and hoped that Trade Kings and Zambeef were working with the community which was their customers.
Ms Wina urged the business sector that the donation rendered would not be a one-off show, but sustained so that the victims would benefit from building new markets.
“Indeed we have seen One Zambia, One nation demonstrated today, because the gifts that we have received today are not only from the business sector, but also through the Radio Christian Voice as a spiritual uplift to all those who lost their goods in the fires and all of us we should realise that working together we can achieve,” said Ms Wina.
Zambeef donated a cheque worth K60, 000, National Milling Company 100 bags of breakfast mealie meal worth K6, 000, Trade Kings donated associated products work K10, 000, while, Radio Christian Voice donated 20 boxes of clothes – both sexes – worth K10, 000.
