By CHUSA SICHONE in Mafinga District –
THE Government has released money to pay off all the farmers who supplied maize, paddy rice and soya beans to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) last year, President Edgar Lungu has said.
Muchinga Province received its share of K20 million.
President Lungu said the Government had also released all the money for the Farmer Input Support Programme’s e-voucher system.
President Lungu said Finance Minister Felix Mutati told him that he had released all agriculture-related money as at Friday last week.
“According to the minister of Finance, he says all the money, which is agriculture-related, whether it’s for farming inputs or for the purchase of maize through FRA has been released, so he owes nothing,” President Lungu said.
President Lungu said this in Mafinga District on Monday in response to complaints by Chief Mwenechifungwe of non-payment of money to farmers by the FRA.
Muchinga Province Minister Malozo Sichone and his Permanent Secretary Jobbicks Kalumba confirmed that the Ministry of Finance had released the money to the province.
Dr Kalumba said in an interview yesterday that K20 million was released last week to cater for all the farmers FRA owed in Muchinga Province.
Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary Julius Shawa last week hinted that the Ministry of Finance was expected to release K171 million to the FRA for it to pay off all the farmers and that K1.149 billion was given to his ministry for the e-voucher programme.
Chief Mwenechifungwe said agriculture was the mainstay of the people in Mafinga District and so they were negatively affected if FRA delayed in paying them their money.
He appealed to President Lungu to ensure that traditional rulers who supplied crops to the FRA be given first priority when time for payments came for them to demonstrate to their subjects that it paid to work hard.
The traditional ruler also noted that the implementation of the e-voucher programme was problematic and was marred with irregularities as only a few farmers in cooperatives were benefitting from it.
He called for the prosecution of individuals who were involved in underhand methods to choose the e-voucher system beneficiaries.
Earlier, President Lungu, who was joined by Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya, among other notables, officially commissioned the Mafinga District health office.
He also inspected the Mafinga District Hospital currently under construction, as  he did to the Muyombe Hospital earlier, which is also still under construction.
President Lungu said so far the two infrastructure were the only ones that impressed him in Muchinga Province and that they cushioned the anger he had over a number of projects which had stalled in the area.
President Lungu also addressed a public meeting in Muyombe, which is within Mafinga District.