Cost of living complaints overblown, says Imenda

Cost of living complaints overblown, says Imenda

By George Zulu

THOSE complaining about the high cost of living are only talking about mealie-mealie and nshima, UPND Deputy Secretary General Gertrude Imenda has said.

Imenda said President Hakainde Hichilema was the best deal for the people of Zambia beyond 2026 as he had scored 90 percent of the promises made in 2021.

“We acknowledge the cost of living is high and the reason, when you look at a Zambian when he is talking about the cost of living is about the stomach and for Zambians mostly is about the nshima. We had a drought, the President had appealed to the others, we noted that farmers were growing other crops such as soya beans because it was given a higher price.

“So, what we did was to say let’s give incentives to farmers in form of increasing the price of maize and we increased the price of maize to K330, and the President appealed to people to grow more food, grow more maize with the incentives put in place and loans which were given, so people responded in 2023. We could have had a bumper harvest, but God had other plans, so the drought came. The drought came that contributed to the high cost of living,” she said.

Imenda explained that if Hichilema was not elected in 2021, the lives of the people would have been difficult especially with the severe drought that hit the country.

Speaking when she featured on Diamond TV yesterday, Imenda said Hichilema’s promises and deliverables were visible to see.

She said Hichilema had employed over a 100,000 people in the civil service since forming government.

Imenda explained that the successes Hichilema and the UPND had scored in the last few years in government were a reflection of good leadership the people.

“There was drought, but President Hakainde dealt with it, nobody died, other people could have failed. He managed to put in place mitigating measures so that nobody dies of hunger.

Those who were affected by draught where given money to mitigate the hunger, social cash transfer was enhanced, pregnant mothers and mothers with babies below two years were being paid and then the food for work programme, people worked and they were given food, we have cash for work, people were paid,” she said.

She said Hichilema was able to resolve the load shedding that had hit the country through the mitigation plan implemented by the UPND administration.

“What we are saying that even the hunger, the high cost of living if we did not put in place mitigation measures it could have been worse, HH’s checklist that we promised we cannot run away to state that we have achieved 90 percent of the things we promised,” she said.

Imenda said the UPND had five years to complete their ten-point plan which they promised the people and therefore, the remaining 10 per cent would be achieved soon.

“Part of the high cost of living is fuel and we do not have our own oil well, we do not produce oil and with the wars in Russia we have seen prices on the world market going up. So, it is very difficult, we don’t produce our own oil but we have put in measurers. It could have been worse if we did not put in measurers to cushion the problems,” she said,

Imenda said the UPND government had done more than what they promised in 2021.

“I will answer this with a question, did we promise free education? Yes, have we achieved it, yes, did we promise the recruitment of teachers, yes, have we achieved it, yes. Did we promise the recruitment and offer jobs? yes, have we achieved it yes, we have already recruited over a 100 000 people who were jobless out there,” she said.

She explained that the UPND government had created an enabling environment for job creation in the country, which the private sector should take advantage of.

“So, did we promise creation of jobs? Yes, have we achieved it? yes, did we promise Napsa partial withdraw so that people can have access to their money rather than for them to wait until they retire? Yes, we have achieved it and you can see it.

Did we promise payment of retirees? Yes, and we have achieved it. And only recently should be last week, Tazara workers were paid, even the council had some arrears, the council workers were not being paid, have we paid them? Yes, we promised we are going to pay them. Did we promise debt restructuring? yes and have we achieved, that is the big one we have achieved,” said Imenda.