CHINESE ‘CLEANING’ KALUNDU MALL MESS

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 13:42:13 +0000

By Bennie Mundando

SHUMEITE Investments Limited has started cleaning the mess it created by illegally commencing the construction of a mall in a residential area without an environmental assessment report and have now engaged the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) to try and rectify the anomaly.

ZEMA has consequently invited Kalundu residents to an “indaba” over the “proposed” construction of an ultra-modern business park in the area by the Chinese investors on Tuesday, August 29, 2017, at the Cosmic Executive Lodge at 09:00 hrs.

According to a letter to the residents’ representative dated August 25, 2017 and signed by ZEMA acting manager in charge of operations – Southern region, Chrispin Simwanza, the agency has explained in detail that the 1650 square metres mall will accommodate a number of facilities. “ZEMA wishes to invite the Kalundu residents to a consultative meeting for the proposed construction of the ultra-modern business park.

“The project involves the designing, development, construction, and operation of an ultra-modern business park in Kalundu and the business park will integrate office space with focused commerce/trade outlets and upmarket guestrooms in a single-storey building.  The building will have a total of four and half floors.

“There will be a total of 83 rooms in the building of which the first and second floors will have one room each while the third and fourth floors will have 38 rooms each. The space on either side of the fifth floor will be developed into recreational facilities and used for sporting activities such as net games,” reads the letter in part.

But some residents talked to yesterday rubbished ZEMA’s manoeuvres to cover Shumeite’s illegal activities by inviting them to what they termed as a “bogus meeting where the agency was scheduled to force them to allow the construction to go ahead.”

“That is all rubbish! First of all, that Shumeite project is not at proposal stage. How can Shumeite be “proposing” when the building is already erected?

“Where were these ZEMA chaps to stop the illegality when these people started building for them to wake up today and call us to a useless meeting probably after being oiled by the Chinese? By law, Shumeite should have had an environmental assessment report in place before commencing that project.

“Secondly, the calling of a meeting on Wednesday when residents are supposed to be at work is in bad faith. We all want to go there and tell them off for gross incompetence and supposed corruption in the manner they are handling this whole issue but they have called for this meeting during the week so that others don’t attend and force the few people who will be available to accept their bogus ideas,” one of the residents complained.

The group spokesperson Namwinga Sichula could not be immediately reached for a comment.