Zambians in UK back dual citizenship clause

Zambians in UK back dual citizenship clause
By Moses Kuwema
Mon 02 Aug. 2010, 04:00 CAT

ZAMBIANS living in the United Kingdom have observed that the 15-year continuous residence period needed for spouses of Zambian nationals to qualify for citizenship as proposed in the NCC draft constitution is too long.

Submitting their comments to the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) during a meeting held at St George’s Hotel on Friday, the delegates welcomed the clause that recommends dual citizenship, but bemoaned the 15-year continuous residence as being too long.

They also observed that the 40-day period given by the NCC to the nation to go through the draft Constitution and make recommendations was too short.

“A Constitution is a document of substance whose sanctity should not be devalued by depriving citizens the right of participation in its input by way of giving a short period of feedback as demonstrated by the forty days given by the NCC to the Nation. They had almost three years working on ideas which were already in public domain and were a brainchild of the people as submitted through the previous Constitutional Commissions,” they observed.

They observed that while a lot of Zambians in the Diaspora had amassed a lot of wealth after taking up citizenship in their adopted countries, they still longed to invest in their country of birth, but felt alienated because their own country did not appreciate them as exhibited by the incessant affront they faced at home for having taken up citizenship in their adopted countries.

The Zambians also observed that while the draft constitution recommends that a Presidential candidate should have been a resident of Zambia for a continuous period of 10 years immediately preceding the election, the document was silently ambiguous on the status of those who were domiciled abroad for the purpose of studies.

“This ambiguity is disturbing in a country which does not have many institutions of higher learning in that it sends most of its tertiary students outside the country, given that the minimum period of higher education from a first degree to a PhD is seven years,” they observed.
On the degree clause, they observed that some chiefs did not have degrees, and yet they administered the affairs of their people better than some degree holders who were on record as having failed to run some companies.

The delegates also felt let down by the Zambian High Commission in the UK, which they said should have been the one sensitising the people about the NCC draft constitution.

They also felt that the NCC should have also gone as far as recommending that they be given the right to vote, as they were a constituency in their own right, given the numbers of those in the Diaspora.