PF Chairperson for legal affairs Brian Mundubile says the Patriotic Front has started the process of amending the party constitution.

And Mundubile says government has reaffirmed its commitment to reduce poverty levels, which are currently at 76 per cent in Northern Province and 54 per cent countrywide.

Speaking at a PF Interactive Forum, Monday, Mundubile disclosed that the PF had started the process of amending the party constitution.

“As the party, we have actually started the process of amending the party constitution. The legal committee was actually meeting two days ago on this topic. There is a special committee that was appointed and headed by the national chairman of the party, Mr Simon Mukupa. That committee will go round the country to engage the party membership and get submissions on the amendment to the party constitution,” Mundubile revealed.

And Mundubile said government had embarked on programmes that would look at reducing poverty levels, which were currently at 76 per cent in Northern Province and 54 per cent countrywide.

“When you look at all the pillars of the 7NDP [Seventh National Development Plan], it all points towards poverty reduction. One of the biggest tasks we have as Northern Province is to reduce poverty. The country averages are about 54.4 per cent in terms poverty levels. But when you go to rural provinces like Northern Province, [it] is as high as 76 per cent. So, as Minister of the Province, one of the programmes we have embarked on was to look at how we can begin to reduce the poverty levels,” he explained.

“So, we embarked on programmes. Firstly, what we had was competitive and comparative advantages. Because when you are looking at developing an area, you clearly must take advantage of what you have.”

He said government was making efforts to try and enhance human development in the country.

“Government is making efforts to try and enhance human development by bringing these institutions close to the people. Government has gone flat out to improve our learning institutions in our country. When you go around, you will see the quality of schools that we have right now,” Mundubile narrated.

He further said that government endeavoured to reduce developmental inequalities in far-flung areas in Northern Province by ensuring that people were accorded with social amenities as those in urban areas.

“In doing so, we will attract investment opportunities from the private sector and foreign direct investment,” he said.

He also said government would put into practice the lessons that he, together with other provincial ministers, learnt when they went to China.

“I must admit that some of the lessons that we learnt when we went to China; we had looked at China’s developmental agenda, how did they come to be where they are now? Because it’s not long ago that China was a poor country. What China did was they looked at their competitive and comparative advantages. Of course, we were sent to China as provincial ministers by the President to go and see, learn and come and apply them at home. So, applying those lessons, when we looked at Northern Province, we realised that our comparative and competition advantages were mainly in areas of agriculture, tourism and port harbour services,” said Mundubile.