MEALIE MEAL PRICES MAY DOUBLE – M’MEMBE

SOCIALIST Party president Fred M’membe has charged that mealie prices may double if the Government does not think ahead.

Dr. M’membe said that crop failure was looming and that by June/July this year, if nothing was done, the price of our staple food mealie meal would be more than double.

He said the options were very limited and if those in Government were not careful, they would end up feeding the country with imported Genetically Modified (GMO) mealie meal, most probably from South Africa.

“Other than boasting, posturing, and lack of humility, there’s absolutely nothing that they are doing to mitigate the looming threat of immense hardship ahead of us. They probably think a miracle will happen. There will be no miracles! Bembas say Lesatapelamuminweapalamika fye. Chachine, inshikushakwa Noah shalipita kale. Tashakabwele. Modern human-beings must produce their own food. They can’t live by hunting and gathering anymore,” Dr. M’membe said.

He said if there was a crop failure, as it seemed to be the case in this situation, it meant food had to be imported adding that it was unfortunate that the UPND Government decided to nearly wipe out all the maize reserves.

“They sold the maize that could have been used as reserves to the DRC and other countries. The country is literally left without any food reserves. Even the financial reserves needed to enable us to import maize or mealie meal have also been depleted. Clearly, they have created a mess, which they are trying to get us out of by guesswork,” he claimed.

He said it was not only mealie-meal that would be affected as stock feed will also be affected, which will mean that the price of chicken, pork, beef, and other livestock products would also go up.

“Without enough stocks of maize, especially if we make a mistake of importing mealie meal like we are doing currently although ZNS is saying it’s importing for the DRC, our milling plants will not have stocks of maize for their operations, which means jobs will be lost. There will be job losses in the milling industry and on livestock farms,” he said.

Dr. M’membe said the country certainly had a huge crisis looming, which required much thinking, much honesty, and much tenacity.