By NATIONS REPORTER
THE economy of the Copperbelt Province is on the deathbed because Government has failed to revamp the mining sector, former Kabushi Member of Parliament (MP) Bowman Lusambo has said.
Mr Lusambo said the province was on its knees and business had come to a standstill because all enterprises that depended on mining had collapsed.
He said the new dawn government did not seem to know what to do with Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) and Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) as nothing had been done to invest in the two mines.
Mr Lusambo said this when he featured on Hot FM’s Hot Seat programme in Lusaka on Thursday.
He said Copperbelt residents were hungry because their livelihood depended on the viability of the mines.
He added that the UPND administration had detached itself from the traditional leaders on the Copperbelt.
Mr Lusambo said the government was making decisions on the Copperbelt without consulting the chiefs.
“We can’t work like this, Copperbelt has 15 traditional leaders but they have not been included in the governance of this country,” Mr Lusambo said.
He said the economic development that the new dawn government was boasting about was empty rhetoric because the situation on the ground was that Zambians were starving and suffering.
Mr Lusambo said the country’s economic performance was measured by production of goods and services, the cost of living and not by word of mouth.
“We cannot be saying that the economy is doing well than it was in the previous regime when the cost of living is rising everyday like never before,” he said.
He also said load shedding had greatly contributed to the rising prices of mealie-meal because millers were failing to sustain production, resulting in shortages.
Mr Lusambo said whenever there is a shortage, demand increases while commodity prices begin to rise.
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