NEW Heritage Party president Chishala Kateka says it would be unwise for the UPND not to end loadshedding in 2026 as most governments usually address pressing issues in an election year.
On Friday, Energy Minister Makozo Chikote said citizens would start seeing the results of the investments that government was making in the energy sector next year, stating that they should not assume that this would be happening because of elections.
In an interview, Saturday, Kateka said UPND had been promising to end load shedding for a long time, therefore citizens could only believe them when it actually happened.“It may happen or it may not happen. As a government that is there, it would be not wise of them if they did not work towards ensuring that [it ends]. It would not work well for them if they didn’t invest adequately to ensure that the people vote for them. Isn’t that what all governments do? They wait until the last minute, then they invest to deceive people, so I’m sure we can expect the same from them. The first thing to note for us is that we’ve been told so many stories. They are not a transparent government, and we’ve been told so many stories that we now no longer know what to believe. What we would say is we wait to see the outcome of those investments. We’ve been told so many stories about what has been invested, as you know, we’ve been told, by June, by this and that time. We are tired of the stories and therefore, we’ll take this as another one of those stories unless and until we actually see that investment bearing fruition,” said Kateka.
“Whether it is about elections or not about elections, the first thing for us to do is to see, because we’ve been told so many stories. Whether the Zambians choose to believe them or not to believe them, that is another story. The people might believe them or they might choose not to believe them, it’s really the prerogative of the people. You know the story of crying wolf, a boy that always said a wolf, a wolf, the whole village comes, then he laughs and says, ‘oh, I’ve tricked you.’ When the real wolf comes, nobody believed him, so if this is the wolf that is coming, we don’t know, we’ll see. These people are not transparent, so we don’t know what they are doing. They are not transparent; this is the most non-transparent government I’ve ever come across”.
News Diggers