By Thomas Ngala
LEADER of the opposition Golden Party of Zambia (GPZ) Jackson Skilavwe has pleaded with government to consider a debt swap for civil servants or workers whose loan repayment interests have significantly risen making it difficult to repay.
In a statement yesterday, Silavwe based his plea on the rise in the cost of living and, according to him, the deliberate wiping out of money from the local market by the government.
He said the government could also reduce Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and introduce direct tax incentives for households and local businesses.
“The UPND government has consistently wiped out money from the local economy through raising the monetary policy rate (MPR). This has resulted in reduced spending power from civil servants or workers and households with loans thereby suffocating the informal sector,” Silavwe said.
Silavwe said ultimately, local informal businesses would continue to close and offload unemployed people on the market.
“Workers are the biggest spenders in the informal sector. President [Hakainde] Hichilema and his government cannot avoid this terrible local economic cycle they have created; they must act now,” he said.
Silavwe urged government to help its workers and the informal sector by deliberately offering them incentives for more spending power to keep the economy afloat.
“Modern economies grow through the workers and the general population spending in their local economy. The rest is fiction,” he said.
The UPND government abandoned the debt swap the last administration had entered into with trade unions to provide relief to the heavily indebted civil servants and other public workers.
