WE can’t wait to hear what the Konkola Copper Mines Liquidator, Milingo Lungu, has to say about the US$1.6 million KCM scandal in which he has been implicated. We can’t wait to see how the battle between the PF cadres is going to pan out and who will end up the rightful beneficiary of this tender. We can’t wait to see if KCM will ever get the so-called Heavy Fuel Oil, which necessitated the US$1.6 million payment to this questionable company called Cashfin. But today, we just want to remind our readers that what is happening at our biggest mine is something that we have written and warned about before.
At some point, those who were warning government to handle Vedanta with care sounded like they had been paid by foreigners to sing their agenda. When we said innocent Zambians were going to pay because of the PF’s carelessness, some people accused us of not being patriotic. Here we are now!
At first, they came up with all sorts of lies to try and explain why a company that is in liquidation was continuing to operate as if there was just a change of management. The answer is in what is happening now. They wanted KCM as a milking cow. They wanted KCM to empower cadres. They wanted the money to make money for themselves and for campaigns.
Liquidation is liquidation; you cannot change it’s definition to suit the government’s position and you cannot use it to hide your intentions from the public. Liquidation is not the same as receivership, or insolvency, or care and maintenance. Liquidation simply means winding up a company, for whatever given reasons, and selling its assets so that it ceases to exist. The Post was liquidated, it is gone! All it’s assets were sold and the company does not exist anymore. How come KCM which was placed under liquidation in May 2019 is still operating as if everything is normal?
Who is Milingo Lungu at KCM? Is he a liquidator or the new CEO? What is he role now, seeing as the company is not under liquidation as the public was made to believe? This man is not a mining expert, he doesn’t understand anything about the mining sector. It’s not his field. So why is government keeping Milingo on that position? Is it to distribute tenders to PF cadres and their bosses?
The PF government must be ashamed about what is happening at KCM. They told the people of Zambia that they were liquidating Konkola Copper Mines because the investor, Vedanta, had failed to pump in the required capital to sustain operations and keep the workers in employment.
The people of Zambia must know that KCM has no cash flow at the moment and is relying on government resources to pay the over 13,000 employees. No one should lie that KCM is more viable now than before or that it’s making more profit now than before. So the people must know that when they hear about US$1.6 million is being shared among PF cadres, they must know that it is their taxpayers money being squandered. If the KCM wage bill is US$2 million a month, where is government getting this money? It is the innocent taxpayers who have been forced to take over this liability.
They said the workers, suppliers and contractors at Konkola Copper Mines needed a more serious investor to take care of their concerns, where is the investor? Is this what you promised the people of Zambia? Why are thieves in PF regalia siphoning public resources through a bogus liquidation process and calling it government intervention?
