By JUDITH  NAMUTOWE –
THE Zambia Cooperative Federation (ZCF) has called for the modernisation of equipment at the Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ) in Kafue to enable local production of urea.
ZCF director general James Chirwa said NCZ was a strategic industry considering that Zambia was an agriculture country with the majority of its people mainly depending on farming.
Mr Chirwa said in an interview that there was need for an extensive revamping of the NCZ’s machinery as it was poor in the current state.
“What we are saying is that NCZ is a strategic industry and revamping it further by modernising its machinery is necessary. At one time we were told that NCZ was a bottomless pit and when we put in money it will not produce results.
But here it is now, it is able to produce fertiliser and economic activities have improved in Kafue,” Mr Chirwa said.
The institution had only one plant operating contrary to the three fertiliser plants that were used to produce inputs in the past.
He said the only requirement was to look at how the Government could make production at NCZ cheaper because fertiliser was expensive to purchase locally compared to the imported one.
“We need to find out why fertiliser in Zambia is very expensive than the one being imported from other countries such as South Africa, yet the ingredients used to produce the commodity are the same and most of them are even further from the source of raw material than ourselves,” he added.