UPND Deputy Spokesperson Elvis Nkandu says students are not “foolish” to be hoodwinked by Brian Mundubile’s promise to extend meal allowances to all universities.
Nkandu says citizens must not take Mundubile and his party members serious because they are “jokers”.
On Friday, NRPUP presidential candidate Brian Mundubile said if elected, he would extend meal allowances to other universities, ensuring that they suit the living realities on the ground.
In an interview, Sunday, Nkandu said it had become clear to Zambians that the opposition had no message.
“Now it has come to every Zambian’s attention that indeed our colleagues have no message, all they are doing is copy and paste. UPND is giving so much under CDF, they [say] they are going to increase. There is free education, they are also going to add uniforms. Meal allowances which they scrapped themselves, they are saying they are going to increase the meal allowances. So, it means everything about them is our manifesto. All they are trying to do is to say they are going to increase yet they don’t even know where they are going to get money from. They don’t even understand what is in the treasury. So I think when people say they want to come and deplete our reserves, this is what we are talking about because people need to grow the economy first before you could even make populistic policies,” Nkandu said.
“What people need to understand is that everyone now agrees with us that they don’t have a manifesto and that’s why when they go on a platform, they always say things that are not real. They are now even talking about marketeers being given excavators, something that is not in this world because they don’t have a manifesto. Now, let me specifically address the issue of meal allowances, they think Zambians are foolish, these are the same people that scrapped off the meal allowances from the students. And if they think that they are going to hoodwink the students in this country by making that populistic policy of saying they are going to increase, there is no guarantee that the students will be able to agree that this same Mundubile is going to implement that. We need to interrogate what is it that happened when they were in office, why did they scrap it?”.
Nkandu said the opposition was broke in government and failed to understand how meal allowances should be managed.
“These people were very broke and they didn’t even understand a meal allowance and how it should be done. My appeal to the students is that don’t take these people serious, they are jokers and when we say these people are jokers, this is what we talk about. Here is the same person scrapping meal allowances from you and today he comes and say I’m going to add more money to it, it doesn’t make sense. So these are jokers who can’t be trusted. They were given an opportunity to manage this country and what did they do? Literally nothing, we went to a negative, and you can only implement what they are talking about if you continue growing the economy, of which they don’t even have ideas of growing the economy. So, whatever Mundubile is saying is a copy and paste and he doesn’t even know where he’ll get money from. So, as I appeal to students and their parents, these are the same people who scrapped off meal allowance and today they cannot come back and tell us that today they are going to increase the amount that we have implemented,” said Nkandu.
