Minister of Transport and Communication Mutotwe Kafwaya says it is flawed to say that government should prioritize fixing the economy over enacting Bill 10 because both issues are priorities in different arms of the government.

And Kafwaya says people should stop making fun of climate change because it is real.

At a public discussion forum on Bill 10 recently, constitutional lawyer John Sangwa argued that Zambia had an economic crisis, not a constitutional one.

“I don’t think it needs to be taken to the people, it doesn’t require refinement and I think people have better issues to focus on. As a country, we are not in a crisis in terms of the Constitution, our crisis is economic. Ideally, our discussion today should have been centered on how we can confront the economic challenges that the country is facing and not the Constitution. We should be ashamed as a country that we have spent the last 29 years discussing about the constitution,” said Sangwa.

Speaking when he featured on 5FM, Thursday, Kafwaya said the economy and Bill 10 were both being prioritised in different arms of the government.

“Priorities in the Executive must not be taken to the Legislature. The issue of economic governance is something that sits squarely in the Executive and Bill 10 is not being debated in the Executive. Bill 10 is being debated into the Judiciary, that’s where it will go. So it is not a priority in the Executive, it is a priority in the Legislature. So you can’t, economic governance and making of laws cannot be brought together and prioritized in the same line, no. Let the priorities in the legislature remain there. If you have issues, don’t mix the economy with making of laws. What is the role of Parliament? Number one, legislation, making of laws. Number two, representation, representing the people who elected them, number three and the final one is keeping the government to account, that is oversight, that is the function of Parliament or the Legislature. So there is nothing there to do with economic governance, nothing. So what is happening there, don’t mix it with the Executive. In the Executive that’s where you say economic governance must be a priority,” Kafwaya said.

And Kafwaya asked Zambians to take climate change seriously.

“You can imagine, people are making fun of climate change. In Dubai, there is no rain, it is a dessert, there has been no rain from generation to generation. But today, because there infrastructure was constructed in such a way that they didn’t envision that it could rain, you saw what happened there, there are floods. What is that? Climate change, but here you make fun of it…we are going to wake up when it is too late. Climate change is real, climate change must be acted upon and we need to be serious about these things. Thank God the rains have come, copper will be okay, the dollar will come down because we are praying on the 18th of October every year, because we are petitioning God,” said Kafwaya.