Dear Editor
February is fast approaching and the Zambian citizens have not yet been availed with the information on the shareholding structures of the two entities KCM has been split into.
Will these two entities be run by local investors or foreign investors?
We were made to believe that government took over KCM because Vedanta was not fulfilling their license obligations and were not forthcoming with capital injection to expand the mining operations and eventually boost production and create more employment, and in turn this failure by Vedanta put the welfare of the KCM employees and the community in a miserable state.
Now as Zambians we beg for answers to the following questions, how much capital has been set aside for each entity and who has put up that capital? What clear employment and expansion projections do these two entities have? How will better conditions of service for the employees be achieved?
KCM is one of our biggest key assets which impacts a lot of Zambian lives in so many ways and one of our biggest source of Forex hence any major changes to it has to be put to strict scrutiny by all well meaning Zambians not just mere pronunciations by the Liquidator, who most us actually feel has overstayed and overstepped his purpose.
When KCM was taken over from Vedanta it was very good news to all of us more especially to the people of Chingola, and there after we were being fed with numerous assurances of a better investor by the Minister of Mines, and this was supposed to have been achieved in about 6months after the takeover according to the Minister.
We were even informed of the due diligence which was being done on the potential investors. But the Minister of Mines just went mute over the matter, just to hear from the Liquidator that KCM has been split into two.
Who was consulted? Which stakeholders were involved in this process and what are the long term benefits, what laid out plans have been put in place for the sustainability of the mines and its operations?
We demand to know this information!
We are still being affected by the effects of privatization because the whole process was not properly scrutinized, we can’t risk it again with this move by the KCM Liquidator.
There is too much uncertainty surrounding this split and we demand transparency.
Its high time we Zambians started running our own mines, and in doing so we must first create trust among ourselves, the government should lead the way with this opportunity which has presented itself through the takeover of KCM.
It would give the citizens a lot of confidence if the government can be very transparent and fair in the way they are running KCM, remove politics and think about the interest of the Zambian people first.
As it stands, we are just left to speculate that this whole move is just political and it will only benefit a few politically connected individuals while majority Zambians will again cry foul just like we are still crying over privatization some 20years later.
Arthur Teleshi
NDC Aspiring MP
Nchanga Constituency
Chingola
