Sata should allow RDA to operate independently - Mulongoti

COMMENT - Message tot the clueless Mike Mulongoti, and the clueless MMD. Present the evidence that privatisation presents an improvement over state control. You can't because privatisation is all about creating monopolies and extracting (harvesting) as much value as possible from any potential Zambian middle class. The only thing the MMD excelled in was taking bribes to sell the Zambian people's property to the lowest bidder. That's privatisation - or as it should be known, profitisation.

Sata should allow RDA to operate independently - Mulongoti
By Moses Kuwema
Fri 12 Oct. 2012, 14:00 CAT

MIKE Mulongoti says President Michael Sata should allow the Road Development Agency to operate independently by putting in safeguards and regulations.

Speaking when he featured on Radio Phoenix's Face the Media programme yesterday that was discussing the construction sector and how to ensure full participation of Zambian-owned companies, Mulongoti, a former works and supply minister in the MMD, said it was not a safe thing to transfer the RDA to State House.

"The nature of that office is that you have got too much power and to be given too much power is not good. It is never a safe thing that you can take contracting into State House; it does not matter who is there. As far as I am concerned, the RDA should be allowed to operate independently.

Let us put in safeguards and regulations. We must continue to allow people to award contracts without involving the highest office in the land. The dangers involved for that industry are too much for the President and his office," Mulongoti said.
He said the fight against corruption must not stifle development.

"If you take it as a preoccupation where every day you are seeing faults and suspicions of this and that one, you are killing development. Let us build confidence and trust in the civil service once again," he said.
Mulongoti said the RDA need strengthening because it had been dismembered because people had left.

He said the RDA was now a shell of its former self and wondered how the few people that had remained would supervise the road projects across the country.
"We should find solutions without injuring the institutions.

The challenge for PF now is that they must find engineers. Engineers are not easy to find. There are very few engineers who are competent and have experience. The engineers that were chased at RDA are now in other countries," Mulongoti said.
He said if the government was suspicious of any engineers at RDA, they should subject them to the normal scrutiny as opposed to hounding them out.

"We must not be emotional to a level where we clear everybody and in the process we injure the operations of the institution," said Mulongoti.
President Sata has transferred the RDA to his office at State House in order to check corruption in road contract.