Democratic Party president Harry Kalaba has charged that Zambia has a government which is only interested in “plundering after plundering”.

In an interview, Kalaba said he had never in his life seen government officials spend public money on personal errands as they were doing in Chilubi.

“In Lumezi, people are eating grass, government has not sent any money, or they have not sent any relief food there but they have sent relief food to Chilubi. For how long will we fool our people? Honestly, for how long will our people be taken for granted in this fashion? It is taking the donors now to get agitated, the donors are the ones who are getting offended and yet we have a regime that is interested in just plundering after plundering,” Kalaba said.

“Look, right now where we are, they are all in Chilubi, the entire system has gone in Chilubi and when you scratch a bit you will find that most of the monies they are using, these are monies which should be going to social sectors, they are getting that money and taking it for themselves to go and do by-elections and do the campaigns. They are using vehicles which should be used to improve our social sectors, they are in the campaigns, they are using drivers who should be driving government officials to be going to deal with these social [issues] that we have, they have taken them into campaign. That’s the problem that we, that’s the biggest deficit that we have.”

Kalaba appealed to Zambians to reject President Lungu in 2021.

“I think it is high time we held our hands, it’s high time we all stood up and said no to President Lungu, no! President Lungu should never have been our President in the first place because he doesn’t prioritize things in this country and we should not make a mistake to allow him go beyond 2021, we can’t. It’s not something that we can ignore now, its eating at the very core, the very fiber of who we are as a people. You can’t have leaders getting government monies and using it for their own personal errands like this. I have never seen, never! I was a civil servant, I have never seen such kind of arrogance, never! I never imagined Zambia would see a day such as this one, I never imagined,” said Kalaba.