FORMER Lands Minister Jean Kapata says reducing the number of cabinet ministers will result in ineffectiveness as people will be stressed with work.

And Kapata says PF is confident about bouncing back in 2026 because they performed, despite the poverty situation in the country.

In an interview, Monday, Kapata wondered what miracles the UPND administration would perform if they reduced the size of Cabinet.

“They want to trim the Cabinet from the usual 28 to something, I don’t know whether it is 18 or even less. So I think for me, let’s first of all wait because whether he wants it or not, the Cabinet will be in place by Friday. Because Friday is the official opening of Parliament and so they can’t go to Parliament without the Cabinet in place. It is easier when you are outside and you are saying things because to cut 28 Cabinet positions to 18, I don’t know what miracle that can be,” she said.

“It will mean that there are no Deputy Ministers and it will mean that people will be stressed with work and as a result, they will be ineffective, that’s the way I look at it myself. When you look at the Ministry of Lands, Fisheries and Livestock, it is a very big Ministry to merge it with Agriculture, which also is a very big Ministry. So it means that the person who is going to be working there will be ineffective because how will he manage? How would they manage to run three Ministries?”

And Kapata said the delay in unveiling Cabinet meant that the UPND did not plan ahead of the election.

“I don’t know what the delay is but I think we need to give him time. He has up to Friday in which to give [us the] Cabinet and Ministers have to be in their positions. So let us give him time and see how he works it up. I think they were taken unaware that they were going to win. The people who voted for them are the youths, the new voters and the people who voted them in power are waiting for jobs,” she said.

“Some of them have said they will not take out their gowns until they are employed, so they are waiting for jobs. People in Mandevu are waiting for the mealie meal prices to come to K50, so we are waiting. So the promises though people are saying it’s too early for us to talk about promises, but those promises they must tell us how they are going to do it.”

Meanwhile, Kapata said PF was confident of bouncing back in 2026.

“We are doing a postmortem which should be ready in the next two weeks so that we see where we made mistakes. Already we are looking forward to it. I believe we have the chance of bouncing back in 2026 because we performed as a party except I think the poverty situation and hunger where people are not able to afford food. It could be one of them, there are many other reasons and that is why we are doing a postmortem. We tried the social department, we tried to give out social cash transfer to vulnerable people,” said Kapata.