Newly elected ZUFIAW president Kasapo Kabende said the abrupt upwards adjustment of fuel would generally affect not only ordinary citizens but also business owners because their cost of doing business would go up as energy forms a substantial part of the cost of production or service.He said much as subsidies removal would be beneficial to the country in terms of economic recovery, there was need to do it in a gradual and well-planned manner.Mr Kabende said Government needed to spread out the sequence of removing subsidies and increasing of prices of electricity and fuel to allow citizens to make adjustments in their consumption of energy. He noted that the poor Zambians were the most likely to be more adversely affected, as costs of their basic needs which includes food stuffs and transport, would go up.Meanwhile, New Heritage Party president Chishala Kateka has also challenged Government to share the situation analysis that they used, to arrive at the decision to lift subsidies and actual increment of fuel and electricity tariffs. “Is the price increase the real cost borne by Government? Have we considered removing the inefficiencies from the equation prior to arriving at this increase? Could the Government kindly share their situation analysis that they used, firstly, to arrive at the decision to lift subsidies and secondly, to arrive at the actual increment,” Ms Kateka said She said transparency at how the two decisions of lifting the subsidies and how the quantum of the increment were arrived at, would be very helpful for citizens.Ms Kateka said Zambians were overly upset with the decision to hike the cost of fuel because they were promised, in no uncertain terms, that they were to be reduced within four months of UPND in Government. She said, “This is so due to the fact that people were expecting, as promised, a K4 reduction in fuel but are instead getting a K4 increase. This is a mental variance of K8 in terms of expectation!!!! So where a person with a 70 litre vehicle was expecting a full tank of K840, they now have to pay K1, 400 for a full tank.”“Zambians were taken for a ride and have indeed been fixed. We were shown by the UPND how the fuel would be reduced to K12. Our learned colleagues in the UPND cannot today claim that they had no inkling of an idea of what was pertaining in the fuel sector. “What is upsetting Zambians the most is the fact that they were ‘Zoomed’ by the party in power and are only now waking up to that fact,” she said.
Remove subsidies in phased approach – ZUFIAW
