Deputy Minister Orders Squatters Off Tuta Bridge

Scores of fishermen and their families who have been leaving on the sides of Tuta bridge on the road leading to the northern Luapula province have been ordered to leave the river side and find alternative ‘lodgings’ according to a statement issued by the provincial deputy minister Kennedy Sakeni.

Sakeni has not given the squatters alternatives on where they can stay neither has mentioned anything close to ‘government compensation’ for the trouble.

These families have been living by the side of the river for decades on end taking over the grass thatched shacks their fathers and their fore fathers once lived in.

The only life they have known over the years is fishing and their favourite dish is either fried, boiled or dried fish, which they also sell to buy things such as mealie meal or send children to school. It is a ‘fishy’business they currently have found themselves in and no one knows what they will live on once they are moved away from the fish.

At press time, they had still put up some resistance but the government appeared determined.

Universal leaf has agreed to set up a plant that shall process tobacco in Zambia following the boom recorded in the industry after the entry of white tobacco farmers from neighbouring Zimbabwe said Zambia’s minister of agriculture and corps Chance Kabaghe.

“We have had discussions with Universal leaf who have agreed to come and set up a tobacco processing plant in Zambia by 2007 or even earlier, Kabaghe said in an interview.

Kabaghe said the company that is helping Zimbabwean farmers settled in Zambia with marketing of the crop and financing said they were hoping by 2007, Zambia’s tobacco industry would hit a steady 30 million gs of tobacco per year or more, a development that would make economic sense for them to set up business locally.

“I don’t have the exact amount they intend to pump in the venture,” Kabaghe said, “but I know it will create more jobs and earn Zambia more foreign currency because the value of tobacco will be added locally instead of exporting the green leaf.”

Zambia, which relies on copper and cobalt exports for about 80 percent of foreign currency receipts, will earn some $40 million from exporting about 30 million gs of tobacco this year according to Kabaghe.

Zimbabwean farmers fleeing the land grab in the neighbouring southern African country have been embraced in Zambia and are becoming major players in the national economy according to figures from the Central Statistical Office.

They are growing tobacco on more than 13,000 hectares of land and employ more than 20,000 jobs. Kabaghe says for each 1600 hectares cultivated, a farmer employs up to 400 Zambians. They also receive good loans of Barclays Bank Zambia Ltd, Stanbic and Standard Chartered bank Zambia Plc., not normally given to local farmers.