Civil rights activist Brebner Changala says government must pay officers who conducted the 2015-2016 mobile registration exercise their dues or reduce salaries for senior government officials to prove that there is no money in the Treasury.

Recently, Department of National Registration, Passports and Citizenship Registrar-General Matthews Nyirongo said the unpaid officers who took part in the 2015-2016 mobile registration exercise would only get their dues when funds were available because the Treasury was currently stressed.

About 700 officers who took part in phase three of the exercise have still not been paid their balance of K15,000 each, despite Home Affairs Minister Stephen Kampyongo promising in Parliament last year that they would be paid at the end of 2018.

But in an interview, Changala charged that the PF government was insensitive to people’s suffering.

“We are dealing with a government that is insensitive to the people’s plights and suffering. A government that is not ready to sacrifice for this country but very ready to abuse the citizenry. This government has got too much money, but for themselves and not anybody else. Those people performed their duties in 2016, now almost three years along the line they are being told that there is no money. That is treachery and criminal,” he charged.

Changala challenged government officials to either cut their salaries or forfeit them to prove that the country was broke.

“They are paying themselves huge allowances. There is no single month when ministers have gone without salaries. They are using VX motor vehicles in the period of austerity measures to drain the treasury. If they were serious, they should be the first people who must go without a salary to justify that the country is broke. They must never draw a salary because they are not doing anything for us. In fact they are an inconvenience to us. My prayer is, can they pay the suffering people, they worked. And secondly, can these characters in government either cut their salaries or go without a salary to show loyalty to the people of Zambian,” he said.

“We have seen in the midst of austerity measures, they are busy spending big. The President travels all over the world unnecessarily for no reason at all, at a huge cost to the treasury. The President must reduce on his foreign trips. Just in the last few days, the wife went to the United States of America with a huge delegation to spend money to go and look at some fire engines. That is hypocrisy.”

Meanwhile, Changala urged Zambians to wake up, saying if the PF government was not removed from office, everyone would perish.

“My appeal to Zambians is to stop thinking about 2021, a thing which is becoming boring. This government of Mr Edgar Chagwa Lungu must be removed from office before we all die and perish. We as Zambians are equally becoming irresponsible by tolerating this criminality, this nonsense, this incompetence. Zambians must wake up,” said Changala.