The award of fuel tankers to youth cooperatives in the previous government is under audit to ascertain whether all beneficiaries were eligible, Ministry of Youth and Sports Permanent Secretary, Kangwa Chileshe has said.Mr. Chileshe said the new dawn administration wanted to establish whether the tankers were given to youths below the age of 35 as per standard.He said in an interview that the awarding procedure under the PF regime was being audited because the fuel tankers were mostly awarded to youths affiliated with the party, a situation that could have compromised the criteria used to pick beneficiaries. Mr. Chileshe said the ongoing audit is cardinal in ensuring that youths of the legal age benefit from the additional 50 fuel tankers that have been procured under the empowerment programme.“Right now we are doing investigations and audits because we want to find out how the previous tankers were awarded. I am looking at a lot of documentation and we want to make sure that they are benefitting the young people,” he said.He assured that the youth empowerment programme would not be politicised because the ministry would ensure that youth cooperatives that meet the criteria acquire the fuel tankers whether they belong to the UPND, PF, or other political parties because they all are Zambians.Mr. Chileshe said the ministry has certain members of the PF who are still beneficiaries of the loans and equipment under the youth empowerment programme, a sign that politics would not be tolerated under the youth empowerment programme.He said the new dawn administration under President Hakainde Hichilema would do things differently to ensure that every youth benefitted from the empowerment programme under the ministry.“There is no politics here, this is a ministry for everybody, so here we are not exercising politics, the previous government did, it was very obvious that they preferred to give loans and empowerment to PF-affiliated youths whether it was in arts or sports,” Mr Kangwa sai
OIL TANKER EMPOWERMENT AUDIT IN MOTIONBy KETRA KALUNGA
