By JOHN SAKALA
Notional Democratic Congress (NDC) NDC Vice Spokesperson Chipoka Mulenga says the sale of Ndola Line shouldn’t leave employees redundant.
In a statement Mr Mulenga said reports say government through ZCCM-IH wants to sale Ndola Lime to private ownership.
“As NDC we further demand to know if at all ZCCM-IH has become incompetent to manage our national treasure of minerals which they have done in years past under other governments.
“What measures have the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) been putting in place to see that ZCCM-IH remains a viable manager of national resources? This concern has been made unavoidable with the recent careless actions by ZCCM-IH of engaging Karma resources of Sudan in the Kasenseli Gold mines of North Western Province and the sale of Ndola Lime. The two recent acts by ZCCM-IH has brought very little confidence in their ability to manage our mineral resources,” he said.
Mr Mulenga said that it is important that the public is informed if at all the tender procedure was followed in offloading ZCCM-IH holding shares to the new owners.
“We demand that the new owners of Ndola Lime, must not terminate any job for any local employees. We demand that all jobs are preserved with enhanced pensoinable conditions of service. Senior management jobs must also be equitably shared with local qualified specialists. We refuse to see a scenario of all top management jobs being foreign covered.
“We demand to know who the new owners are? How many bidders of the Ndola Lime where available and what did each of them offer? As NDC, we call on the ministry of labor and mines to ensure that the employees get at least three months redundancy pay for each year served before as they are re-engaged,” he said.
Mr Mulenga said every well meaning government must have an agenda to empower its citizenry and local entrepreneurs with sustainable and successful business enterprises that have capacity to compete at international level.
He however, said under the PF leadership, the agenda is to sale every national economic securities to foreign nationals.
Mr Mulenga enterprises that Zambians are well able to run and have been managing in past years are all under threat.
“Indeni has not been processing crude oil because of total neglect by Government to have a mutually beneficial understanding with suppliers.
“Suppliers that have always been arm twisting Zambians. A situation which, if allowed to continue, will completely cripple the already ailing economy of Zambia. An excuse PF is waiting for to justify the complete sale of Indeni Oil.
“Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ) has been run down by this regime deliberately just to allow their friends in the name of middle men who are given contracts to buy and supply fertilizer from Persia. All these suppliers are of Asian origin. No Zambian entrepreneurs is involved in the business chain. NCZ has capacity to fulfill Zambia’s need of fertilizer and export to other nations. All that is needed is recapitalization by government.
We know of a plan to sale NCZ under the pretext that it is unprofitable,” he said.
