PRIVATIZATION OF MINES HASN’T HELPED US – MUSONDA

By NAMO PHIRI

SOCIAL Anthropologist James Musonda has said the country will never enjoy the full benefits of its minerals as long as they continue to be privatized.

Dr. Musonda said this is because no country in the whole world has ever benefited from going the privatization route.

He said it was surprising that Zambia had continued to go the privatization route despite all the leaders that have led the people seeing that the country has never for once benefited from privatization.

He said it was so obvious that the reason every leader that came into power from the first time that the mines were privatized had chosen to go the same route was because they were low key benefiting from so-called investors and the people running the mines.

He said this was so because it did not make sense that all the leaders had chosen to go the same route of privatization despite it not yielding the desired results.

He said privatization only benefited the foreigners running the mines, leaving the country polluted and poverty-stricken.

“Just look at the welfare of our miners; they are languishing in poverty while these companies make their money which they take back to their countries,” Dr. Musonda said

He said many Zambians working in the mining industry had languished in debt and poverty for over 20 years because of privatization.

He said it was unfortunate that leaders had chosen to go the privatization way for their own benefits while neglecting the needs of the majority Zambians.

He gave an example of Vedanta in which he alleges that the company did not in any way benefit the people of Zambia when they were running the Konkola Copper Mine.

He added that what was surprising was that the companies which were buying and running the mines in Zambia were state-owned in their own countries where they were taking back the money that they made.

“What is also very disappointing is that we offer these foreign countries incentives that only benefit them and not us, such as tax holidays,” he said