By GIDEON NYENDWA
GOVERNMENT should create opportunities that will empower political cadres if it is to permanently keep them off markets and bus stations, New Heritage Party (NHP) president Chishala Kateka has said.
Ms Kateka said the current removal of cadres would be shortlived if their livelihoods were not looked it. “The solution is creating employment for them,” she said.
Most councils have taken over the running of markets and bus stations from the cadres to maximise their revenue base. Ms Kateka however said this would be an exercise in futility if the cadres were not empowered as most of them would resort to criminality.
She said the cadres were like any other youths who were unemployed countrywide and it was unemployment that made them resort to collecting money from the markets and bus stations. “That was their source of livelihood so they shouldn’t be removed and left just like that,” she said.
Ms Kateka said the New Heritage Party had also been advocating for the removal of cadres from the bus stations and markets because it was unfair for the people who were paying illegal tax to the cadres. She said having cadres in the markets was a bleeding ground for violence because if they had kept them it would have been catastrophic.
Ms Kateka said that those who lost places they used to control would still have wanted to fight back and get their places in the markets and bus stations. She said ordinary Zambians had been calling for the removal of these cadres and their cries should be heard by removing them permanently.
