By MAIMBO MWEEMBA
Opposition Leadership Movement leader Richard Silumbe says that the country cannot continue to cerebrate donor funding.
Mr Silumbe said that there is need to work-out a master plan for economic recovery that factors-in local resources such as local labour, local natural resources, land and little financial resources that are locally generated.
He said that that he UPND government may not employ the 70,000 teachers or 40,000 nurses any time soon.
Mr Silumbe said that they may not even raise the salaries for the 900,000 civil servants anxiously waiting for pay rise, anytime soon with reliance on donor funding.
“We understand, because these are secondary jobs and they jobs need a huge revenue base to support such a huge wage bill associated with employing skilled manpower however the UPND government can rapidly and resolutely recruit 1,000,000 unskilled or less skilled young people languishing in the streets for ZNS production jobs, they can go for one year six months training, during which, they can render their labour for production purposes, for the glory of mother Zambia! State farms in every district can emerge,” he said.
Mr Silumbe said that if this is done, in one year 6 months, the country can produce 5.8 million tonnes of maize that can be exported to Congo, Zimbabwe, Angola and other countries.
He said that the country can also produce other cash crops such as Cannabis, and Tobacco and export for billions of dollars.
“If this program is effectively executed (i.e without corruption and pilfering), we can generate enough revenue that can be used to employ more teachers, more nurses, raise salaries for civil servants and pay the ZNS recruits salaries after training. We need to start with primary jobs that are labour intensive and require less skill, so that labour can be channelled into production of tangible products that can be exported for forex,” he said.
