By JAMES KUNDA and EMILY KUWEMA –

.Lungu

PRESIDENT Edgar Lungu has directed the Ministry of Agriculture to take all necessary steps to help farmers respond to the possibility of increased danger of the army worm pest, which is devastating maize fields in some parts of the country. Meanwhile, the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI) has called on farmers to be alert and equip themselves with pesticides due to the imminent army worm outbreak.
Mr Lungu has also said people and institutions charged with the responsibility of delivering farming inputs to farmers participating in the current crop growing season should apply greater effort in the exercise.
“To those charged with the responsibility to deliver farming inputs, please act with greater effort; take all necessary steps to help farmers respond to the possibility of increased danger of the army worm pest devastating maize fields in some areas,” President Lungu said.
Mr Lungu said this in a statement on his Facebook page yesterday.
The President said he remained focused in leading national efforts to ensure the Government minimised humanly containable phenomena on the people.
Army worm presence has been reported in parts of Eastern, Southern, Central, North-Western and Northern provinces.
ZARI director Moses Mwale said his organisation was sending a clarion call to farmers to be ready to spray and eliminate the destructive worms before they spread.
According to a statement issued by the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU), the pronouncement was made when Vice-President Inonge Wina visited ZARI last week.
ZNFU stated that barely a week after reports of outbreaks of the dreaded army worms in Eastern and North-Western provinces, and some spots around Lusaka West, ZARI had cemented the warning.
Ms Wina called on ZARI to partner with various stakeholders to fight and contain the army worms, saying the situation could be managed if handled collectively and warned that the army worm had come to stay.
Meanwhile, the President reiterated his call for local and central Government authorities to double their efforts against the cholera outbreak in Lusaka, so that the epidemic did not spread to other parts of the country.
President Lungu urged residents in cholera-affected areas, especially people from other neighbourhoods, to act responsibly by avoiding practices that may worsen the outbreak.
Mr Lungu reminded people to wash fresh foods thoroughly, boil drinking water, wash hands regularly, avoid handshakes and unnecessary communal gatherings.
“Let us act in one accord to defeat cholera,” the President said. “Together we can succeed.”
And the Lusaka anti-Cholera joint partnership between Times Printpak Zambia Limited and the Makeni Islamic Welfare Limited (MIWL) has gained momentum.
MIWL Board member Haroon Gumra said the two institutions had implemented various strategies to help the Lusaka City Council (LCC) combat the spread on the disease.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Gumra called for enhanced media interest in the partnership to increase public awareness on measures to prevent cholera.
So far more than 1,000 cholera cases have been recorded in Lusaka alone with about 30 deaths.
Mr Gumra said the joint partnerships had also brought on board a Lusaka-based filling station which had agreed to donate fuel to the LCC to help the local authority in its garbage collection effort.
Mr Gumra urged other members of the business community to donate whatever they could to contribute to the cholera fight in Zambia’s capital city.