Miners on the Copperbelt have expressed anger and disappointment at the poor handling of the mining sector in the province, accusing the government of having neglected the local people who direly need jobs to survive the current economic conditions.
But PF cadre and Mufuliira District Commissioner Chanda Kabwe has said it was not true that miners were complaining on the Copperbelt because people had seen the unprecedented development taking place on the Copperbelt.
Amid recent announcements by major mining operators such as Glencore that they were halting operations over owed VAT payments, the workers interviewed by Zambia Reports complained over what they describe as “slave wages and poor working conditions” being offered by foreign multinational mining companies.
Miners interviewed in Chingola and Kitwe this week said they were disappointed with the Patriotic Front (PF) government for turning a deaf ear on Zambian labourers, who in large part voted the Michael Sata regime in power.
The miners said there were a lot of uncertainties and abuse of local labour by foreign employers but the government was doing nothing to resolve the matters.
One of the miners, Kabaso Chanda, who works for the Konkola Copper Mines in Chingola said miners on the Copperbelt were very disappointed with the PF government for failure to improve the mining industry as promised prior to the 2011 elections.
“The problem we have is that the MPs we voted for have even stopped coming to visit us. We have PF cadres occupying senior government offices and they are just amassing wealth while we are getting poorer. Nothing has improved economically and socially on the Copperbelt. The miners are the one who are gravely affected because the Copperbelt and Zambian generally relies on the mining industry that has been neglected so much. We have never seen this kind of negligence, not even in the previous government,” he said.
Another interviewee Douglas Chipoya said miners on the Copperbelt had continued to curse the day they voted for Michael Sata and his team because this day had brought misery on their already precarious situations.
He said there was need for the PF government to implement their campaign proposals instead of diverting people’s attention to other semantics such as the construction of roads because this was a continuation of projects initiated by the previous regime.
“What is annoying is that they have refused to implement policies such as the windfall tax, which they had talked about very much. If such policies were introduced, miners would have benefitted greatly on the Copperbelt and the general economic and social welfare of the people would improve,” he said.
Chanda said the PF government had misplaced its policies and this change in plans had cost the popularity of the regime.
He said scores of people who supported the people in the previous elections had changed their positions now because people had realized the ruling party had no plan for developing Zambia.
“What we have gathered is that the people in government have no plan on how to develop the country. We have seen of late is not what we expected and that is our regret. We are suffering on the Copperbelt and this problem has been compounded by the influx of Chinese nationals who are after our minerals. They have acquired mines and they have also erected illegal and dangerous smelters that are also posing a lot of health and environmental hazards for people. The government officials are just looking and it is business as usual. We are wondering what has happened to the PF we knew all these years,” he said.
But Mufulira District Commissioner Chanda Kabwe said there was massive and unprecedented development currently taking place on the Copperbelt and Mufulira in particular.
He said Michael Sata and the PF had remained committed to their election promises and it was only people shot –sighted people who were too blind to see.
According to a recent announcement by the Zambian Chamber of Mines, the government’s failure to address the value added tax (VAT) rule #18 would result in continued job losses in the mining sector, while others fear that the VAT that was withheld by the government has already been spent.
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