By NATION REPORTER
CONTRARY to public speculation, President Hakainde Hichilema has the total support of his Cabinet Ministers in the crusade against corruption because the vice is a cancer whose fight should not be left to the Head of State alone, Paul Kabuswe has said.
Mr Kabuswe, the Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources says President Hichilema had remained crystal clear in his messages about the fight against corruption and it was only prudent that all his Ministers rallied behind him if the vision of eradicating graft was going to be actualised.
Mr Kabuswe says the Ministry of Mines had so far taken a number of practical steps to curb corruption which he said had become endemic in the previous administration.
He said President Hichilema was envisioning a corrupt-free Zambia and that Cabinet Ministers had no choice but to implement actions and policies that would be able to meet the desires and vision of the head of State.
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Mr Kabuswe said the Ministry of Mines under his stewardship was in total support of President Hichilema’s call that all should be involved in the fight against graft.
He admitted that the Ministry of Mines was one of the culprit ministries in as far as corruption was concerned and that since the new dawn took over the governance of the country, he had taken it upon himself to clean up the mess by closing the Cadaster which he said was a conduit of corruption.
Mr Kabuswe explained that he had decided to close the Cadaster soon after being appointed Minister to take audit of what was happening in an effort to stamp out the scourge of corruption.
“President Hichilema has been strong in the fight against corruption and I want to tell you that the head of State is not alone in this crusade. When President Hichilema makes a statement be it on corruption or any other policy, respective Ministries go into action. I can tell you that we (Cabinet) are 100 percent behind President Hichilema in the fight against corruption in the new dawn administration. The President has the support of all of us in Cabinet and as a team, we are making sure that the boss has our backing in the fight against corruption,” Mr Kabuswe said.
And Mr Kabuswe has said he would soon be issuing a Statutory Instrument (SI) that would limit on the issuance of mining licences to five because many people were obtaining the licences for speculation purposes and corruption.
Mr Kabuswe said one of the reasons the Cadastrer was closed was because when he took over, he discovered that there were too many allegations of corruption with people complaining that their licences were being taken away unfairly.
He said the Statutory Instrument to be signed would limit the number of mining licences to five and that those wishing to obtain more than the prescribed number would have to show cause for it.
Mr Kabuswe has also announced that the Ministry of Mines had since set up the Minerals Commission to regulate the mining activities in the country, stating that the mining sector had remained unregulated for a long time.
“Before we came in, it was like each one was doing whatever they wanted…and as a practical step we have set up the Minerals Commission. We have done the structures and we are just incorporating the submissions of the various stakeholders. We are consolidating the document and that is one critical component in the fight against corruption. The Minerals Commission is not just targeting small-scale miners but even larger mining firms in both the brown and green field mining as well as the regulating the issuance of mining licences,” Mr Kabuswe said.
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