• NICO Insurance Zambia Limited Livingstone branch manager Kapandula Nkhata (third from left) shakes hands with Livingstone Golf Club captain Modern Silunyange (second from far right) as members of the club look on. This was when NICO Insurance donated lawn mowers to the club. Picture by BRIAN HATYOKA.

By BRIAN HATYOKA –
NICO Insurance Zambia has donated a grass mower and cutter worth K7, 000 to the Livingstone Golf Club.
Speaking when he received the donation on Monday afternoon, Livingstone Golf Club president Wilson Ngoma appealed to the corporate world to come on board and help the club improve its golf course and make it attractive.
Ngoma said the club has had difficulties in maintaining the golf course after the developer who was supposed to take care of the greens disappeared and thus the request to the business community to come on board and partner with the club.
“As members of the Livingstone Golf Club, we have taken it upon ourselves to ensure that this game of golf is not a seasonal one. We are therefore asking the business community in Livingstone and Zambia in general to partner with us to see to it that we make Livingstone Golf Club the best in the country,” Ngoma said.
He said the club wanted a tractor to enable it attend to the golf course all the time when it needed attention.
And NICO Insurance Zambia Limited Livingstone branch manager Kapandula Nkhata said his firm felt indebted to identify itself with the community where it was operating and thus the decision to donate.
“Livingstone Golf Club was established in 1908 and it is the country’s second golf club after Chipata Golf Club established in 1904.
As Zambia celebrates the golden jubilee this year, we need to celebrate it in golden style through golf and other sporting activities,” Nkhata said.
Livingstone Golf Club captain Modern Silunyange thanked NICO Insurance Zambia Limited for the donation saying the gesture comes at a time when the club has been trying to improve the course but had difficulties securing support from the corporate world.
Meanwhile, Little Park Limited, the company that was given a 20-year lease to develop the Livingstone Golf Club, has refuted Ngoma’s claim that the developer abandoned maintaining the course.
Little Park Limited managing consultant Yataba Nyausiska said in an interview that it was not true that the company abandoned its works at the golf club.
Nyausiska said the developer had three directors and one of them was a prominent Livingstone lawyer Frederick Chuungu and a couple based in Lusaka.
The Livingstone Golf Club executive members are in a stressful situation now because at one time when Little Park was doing fine, they were able to be paid K580, 000.
They have never accounted for that money to the people of Livingstone. So it is immoral for someone who plundered K580, 000 to start talking of stress now,” she said.
Nyausiska said the committee should tell the people of Livingstone how they used K580, 000 because they don’t even own even a slasher.
“This stress has been brought up by their plundering. They even said they want a tractor and yet someone among them bought a big tractor at a cost of K5, 000.
“This is also plundering because tractors cost more than this amount.
Yes Little Park Limited owes the committee K180, 000 but this amount is little compared to K580, 000 they plundered,” she said.
Nyausiska said the developer already made headway to pay committee members as well as to revamp the golf course.