MMD youths have decried the amount of time politicians are spending on non-productive politicking instead of focusing on development.
The youths have also called on President Edgar Lungu not to miss the opportunity to set the tone for the country’s development.
MMD youth secretary Bowman Lusambo said in a statement that since 2011, there has been little that one could point at with regard to development.
He regretted the fact that the nation has been in a constant frenzy of electioneering with endless parliamentary and local government by elections, adding that this has robbed the nation of the time and resources required to push the development agenda.
“As politicians, we have devoted immense amount of time to bickering and insulting each other without offering workable solutions to the country’s myriad of social and economic challenges,” he said. “If you examine the development indicators, Zambia is still lowly ranked on the UN Human Development Index which over 68 percent of its citizens classified as living in poverty.”
Lusambo pointed out that one of the key challenges facing Zambians people today is malnutrition.
“When as politicians we focus on outdoing one another on trivialities, a good number of our citizens are going to bed hungry or inadequately fed.
“This pattern compromises their bodies’ ability to fight common infections resulting in the long queues we see at our clinics and hospitals,” he said.
Lusambo stressed that it is unacceptable that Zambia has close to 40 percent of its children under the age of five stunted, adding that it is a tragedy that even in the abundance of the county’s staple crop Maize, hundreds of households cannot afford to buy mealie meal.
“As politicians, we must collectively share in the blame for the mess that we have put our country into. We must relook at the situation and apology for failing our people,” he said.
“Even as opposition politicians, we need to shift our focus to things that matter to our people. Our people are fatigued from the constant and endless series of politicking and electioneering.
“We need to start discussing how we can improve the water and sanitation situation in Kanyama, Chawama, Mandevu and other compounds where people regrettably still use pit latrines and shallow wells, “he said.
He pointed out that President Lungu has a unique opportunity to set the tone for the development of the nation.
“President Lungu needs to pronounce himself and his vision to eliminating malnutrition and poor sanitation which afflicts millions of our people.
“We therefore appeal to President Lungu to elevate the National Food and Nutrition Commission to the Office of the Vice President. This, we believe will be a step towards prioritising the fight against malnutrition and enable smooth implementation of nutrition targets agreed upon at the London Nutrition for Growth Hunger Summit in June 2013,” he said.
Lusambo stated that in its current state, the National Food and Nutrition Commission is too handicapped to effectively push the nutrition agenda.
“We also appeal to the PF administration to expedite the process of repealing the current Nutrition Act by presenting a bill to the National Assembly in the next sitting,” he concluded.