.LUBINDA

By REBECCA MUSHOTA? –

GOVERNMENT has dissolved boards for the Food Reserve Agency (FRA), Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ) and four other statutory bodies under the Ministry of Agriculture because of ineffectiveness.
The other boards dissolved are Tobacco Board of Zambia, Cotton Board of Zambia, Zambia Coffee Board and Dairy Development Board.
Boards of all the trusts under the ministry which are In-Service Training Trust, Golden Valley Agricultural Research Trust (GART), Livestock Development Trust and Cotton Development Trust have also been dissolved.
Agriculture and Livestock Minister Given Lubinda announced the dissolution of the boards at a Press briefing in Lusaka yesterday.
The minister said the boards had been dissolved because some of them had their mandate expired, while in others, some board members had overstayed.
This, he said, was against good corporate governance.
“All functions that were being handled by the boards and trusts will, from now until further notice, be handled by permanent secretaries in the ministry,” Mr Lubinda said.
He said the boards and trusts had been put in place to perform functions on behalf of the ministry with the view that they would perform better than Government departments.
Some board members were a part of those boards from the time the institutions were set up, while in other cases, only part of the board members turned up for meetings.
Mr Lubinda said that was an obstacle to the Patriotic Front (PF) Government’s vision to improve efficiency.
He said in a few weeks, his permanent secretaries would submit name proposals for members of the various boards and trusts.
The names would then be forwarded to Cabinet for approval.
Soon after, Mr Lubinda would announce the composition of the various boards and the policies to govern them.
Meanwhile, Government would soon sign contracts for the distribution of top dressing fertiliser under the Farmers Input Support Programme (FISP).
Mr Lubinda said he would soon be signing contracts for the top dressing fertiliser.
He said NCZ was still distributing the basal dressing fertiliser to all the districts and the exercise was still within schedule to distribute fertiliser by end of August.