Patriotic Front – PF Presidential Aspirant Chishimba Kambwili has described the United Party for National Development – UPND government as not inspiring because they tied themselves to so many promises which they have failed to fulfill.
Mr. Kambwili sufficed to state that the UPND has fulfilled one or two promises but even the same promises that they have fulfilled have had so many announcers, adding that for instance, they promised to introduce free education policy which was not well thought of before it was implemented, as they rushed to implement it.
“The money that they are sending to the schools as grants is not enough for the schools to run and sooner or later the schools will stop running examinations and tests, mock exams because the money they are getting from the government as grants is not enough. The problem that we have now is too much intimidation of civil servants that they are even failing to tell them the truth for fear of being victimized, if the Head Master said today that the money that they are sending them is too little to run the school, the following day that Head Master will be transferred,” he said
Mr Kambwili mentioned that most of the schools during that time of user fees and PTA funds bought even buses and utility vehicles but now the schools are not even having that money to service the utility vehicles, and the schools are not having enough fuel to attend to certain inter-schools activities.
“So, when you are in introducing a policy what you need to do is for instance they should have gone to the schools to find out on an average how much does the school run on in terms of expenses per month, term and per year and then you make provisions for grants tailored to the budget of the schools, as some schools are much bigger than other schools for instance there are Secondary schools which have streams from grade 8 to 12 with 4 classeswhile other schools have more streams of classes, and if you are giving 50 thousand kwacha to both small and bigger schools the bigger school will fail to operate,” he said
He further mentioned that as much as the free education policy is a good thing for the people of Zambia, the education standards are going to drop very badly because the schools are not meeting the needs for them to offer quality education.
And Mr Kambwili stated that the UPND micro-economic indicators are fictitious, adding that if the inflation is brought down then automatically the price of commodities, goods and services must also go down.
“Under the PF the inflation was reported to be above 20 percent and the UPND are saying they hjave dropped it to a single digit, the price of commodities under PF was much lower than the prices of commodities today, so how do you measure your inflation if the price of commodities are going up, this automatically shows that those inflations figures are doctored, and one example that shows that the inflation figure is not correct is that the government owes local suppliers about billions of Kwachas whcih a very collosal sum of money and they have refused to pay them ststaing that they will undertake audit before paying them, those business men usually go to the Bank or lending institutions to borrow in order for them to to service the orders on their contracts with the government, so that money has been saifoned out of the economy, so how do you detrmine your inflation when you have saifoned money from economy by way of not paying the suppliers and contractors who also went and borrowed from the financial instituions which are also limping because of the non service of their facilities,” Mr Kambwili explained
He added that there is not where in the world where inflation can be reduced from 22 percent to 9 percent, yet the prices of commodities are going up times three.