MILLERS SHOULD JUST SHUT UP!

IT DOES not matter who is in Government or who is connected to who. What matters is how we, as a people of this great nation, place the interest of this country ahead of our own selfish interests. Truth remains; no sane businessman or woman ventures into trade to make losses or impress those in power or the citizens.

Businesses are not charitable organisations where owners play Father Christmas on the streets. Businesses venture into trade to make profits failure to which, they may end up winding up their operations and close down as it is not feasible to run a business on losses.

However, the appetite by millers to milk from both their Government and the ordinary Zambians through their arm-twisting antics can no longer be tolerated and must put to a complete stop because these are turning into pure daylight robbers who have continued manipulating successive Governments in their quest to make huge profits.

Those with chicken memory and are defending the nonsense from millers should realise that the issue of skyrocketing mealie meal prices did not start yesterday. This has been the phenomenon since 2012 and while we do not expect the bag of mealie meal to stagnate at K85 at which it was fetching in 2012, we, the consumers should never parade ourselves at the altar of exploitation all because of these greedy millers who are up to squeeze our necks and make huge profits in the name of the cost of production going high.

The cost of production runs across sectors. It is not only on mealie meal but nearly everything produced. Even the cost of producing this paper has increased almost twice since January but even as we weave through this, there is need for sanity and not just doing things because they suit your entity.

It has been the same tactics that the millers have been using all these years; create an artificial shortage of mealie meal by either exporting more or producing less so that there is low supply and allow the mealie meal prices to escalate to beyond the obvious.

After creating this crisis, they are always assured that the Government would engage them as stakeholders and the resolution of such engagements is for the Government to release cheap maize to them but after they get this maize, they will only reduce the mealie meal prices by a meagre K2 and the upward swing continues within a short period of time.

To put this into perspective, it was in February this year when the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) and the milers held a crisis meeting aimed at reducing the price of the commodity after the cartel among millers decided to hike the price.

As usual, the Government was arm-twisted into giving them cheap maize from the FRA depots dotted across the country. The FRA offloaded over 152,000 metric tonnes of maize to the millers with the intention of reducing the cost of mealie meal. As usual, these same millers in turn agreed to price a 25 kg of mealie meal in Lusaka at K160.

Immediately, the millers paid for 75,000 metric tonnes of maize and were instructed to collect maize from their nearest FRA depots. The FRA further sold maize to 33 districts under the rural vulnerable communities to ensure household food security.

Additionally, the Agency authorized the release of 50,000 metric tonnes of maize to the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) for relief purposes for households affected by floods and all this was aimed at reducing the price of mealie meal. Now, how long was the mealie meal sold at that price? Once the millers collected this maize, they continued increasing the prices while justifying the move to the increasing cost of production.

We can bet even now, if the millers are given subsidised mealie meal, they would only reduce the price by not more than K3 despite getting the maize for a song from the Government thereby making huge profits at the expense of the ordinary Zambians.

Millers are a bunch of selfish individuals who celebrate at the continued misery of the local farmers where they have been used to getting cheap maize and the moment the Government decided to double the maize floor price to enable farmers get value for their produce, we knew there was a problem on the horizon as millers would want to use this as an excuse to punish the end-consumers by passing on to tem, senseless costs.

As usual, they expected the Government to go back to them tail-between-the-legs to beg them to get maize almost free of charge from FRA and continue making profits without any sensible reduction of the commodity on the market.

Even if the same maize being given to ZNS was given to the millers to reduce and stabilise the commodity prices, these selfish individuals would not have effected the reduction we are seeing from ZNS. That is how selfish these can be and if there is a consumer sympathising with millers today, then there must be something wrong for anyone to exhibit such dweebish thinking and we will not be apologising to anyone over a stolen goat.

Under normal circumstances, if the Government had not put modalities in place, all the mealie meal being produced by these unpatriotic millers would have ended up in Congo and other surrounding countries and we are happy that the Government was forward thinking because the deployment of Border Guards has salvaged the situation.

Yes, it is a free market economy and no one is dictating any price to any miller or effecting price controls. Anyone is free to price their mealie meal whichever way they want. Let them remain with their high prices because all ZNS has done is to make use of the cheap maize that the same millers were taking advantage of to exploit Zambians. ZNS has just reduced the prices because of the cheap maize they are getting and because the millers no longer have an alternative market for their products, they are now crying.

To the Government, kudos for putting these unpatriotic chaps in the perfect position. If it is possible, employ more Border Guards to ensure that no single grain of maize on mealie meal leaves the country while giving more incentives to ZNS to produce more.

As a matter of fact, give ZNS everything they need to reduce the commodity even further because that is the only way these millers will sit down and nobody should sympathise with their crocodile tears because they do all these wrong things knowing very well that the issue of mealie meal is highly-politicised.