By SYLVESTER MWALE –
CENTRAL Province Minister, Davies Chisopa says the province currently has more than 25,500 tonnes of maize in the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) sheds and the current mealie-meal shortage is not justifiable.
Mr Chisopa noted that the Government was more worried with space where to stock the next harvest because most of the FRA sheds in the province were full.
He was speaking after he led Provincial Permanent Secretary Daisy Ng’ambi and officials from the security and law enforcement agencies to verify the maize stocks in the Province on Wednesday.
The team inspected Kabwe District Cooperative Union (KDCU) and KIFCO before touring Natuseko sheds in the outskirts of Kabwe.
The verification exercise revealed that the province had a total of 25,536 metric tonnes of maize against the monthly consumption of 5,000 tonnes.
“We don’t expect this artificial shortage of mealie-meal; my appeal to the people of Central Province and Kabwe in particular is that they must not be worried.
“We know this could be a cartel or a politically motivated move but I think we are going to be on top of things, we’re going to sit down with millers and agree certain terms as a province,” he said.
He said the Government would ban the movement of mealie-meal from the province if that was what would help to improve the stocks of the staple food in the region.
Mr Chisopa called on millers to be responsible and patriotic to ensure that the commodity was available on the market.
FRA provincial marketing coordinator, Timothy Chanda said some millers had been given an additional allocation of maize in a bid to boost the availability of mealie-meal.
He said registered millers were getting a total of 250 tonnes of maize every day.
Mr Chanda said there was no justification to have food shortage in the province because the current stocks wwere sufficient to feed the people in the area for 14 months.