Maravi

Donors must not pay for our inefficiencies - Col Panji

Donors must not pay for our inefficiencies - Col Panji
By Christopher Miti in Chipata
Mon 22 Nov. 2010, 04:02 CAT

COLONEL Panji Kaunda says it is not fair for taxpayers from other countries to pay for Zambia’s inefficiencies. Commenting on the misappropriation of global funds sent to Zambia, Col Panji warned that donor funds would not continue to come forever.

“The issue that we need to discuss as Zambians is the cost of running our government; I am sure most of us have followed what is happening in Europe, America and other countries where millions of the citizens are unemployed. The reason why (US President Barrack) Obama lost the mid-term elections is because 10 per cent or thereabouts of Americans are unemployed…,” Col Panji said.

“We must not take the British or any other donor country’s taxpayer to pay for our inefficiency because their own citizens are going hungry. Our government should also look at the cost of running the country.”

He appealed to the donors to prioritise rural areas when giving out aid. Col Panji further said the economic growth that people in government were talking about was not a reality in rural areas.

And Col Panji said the forefathers who were semi-illiterate did a lot in developing the country than what the current generation had done.

“We should look at what we have achieved 46 years after independence; but if we haven’t achieved, why haven’t we achieved what we wanted to achieve?

In my personal view... we have fallen short of what we wanted to achieve.

In the rural development sector if you compare with what our forefathers did, those gentlemen and ladies were almost semi-illiterate some of them did not go to school, others could not read properly but what they did was more than what us have done with our computers, Internet and our facebooks,” Col Panji said.

He said the forefathers put all the efforts in developing the country.
Col Panji said the country was facing a lot of problems nowadays because the new breed of leaders was selfish.

“Most of our leaders are not prepared to serve the people; they are there to serve, number one, themselves.

If they were there to serve us the rural people, we would not be suffering as we are suffering today.

We cannot understand that today 46 years after independence, we can still have malnutrition in rural areas.

This clearly shows that there is something wrong somewhere,” said Col Panji.

Labels: CORRUPTION, DONORS, PANJI KAUNDA

posted by MrK @ 3:45 AM