NAREP leader Elias Chipimo says calls by President Edgar Lungu’s Press Aide Amos Chanda to institute an inquiry into privatization of national assets during the MMD era is a witch hunt targeted at people who are causing them sleepless nights.

And Chipimo has charged that President Lungu and his team are godfathers of corruption.

Meanwhile, People’s Alliance for Change (PAC) president Andyford Banda says the governance system, under PF, is rotten and beyond redemption.

Featuring on Hot FM’s Hot Seat programme, Thursday, Chipimo said it would make more sense for the President to instead institute an inquiry into the purchase of fire tenders, among other exorbitant procurements.

“It’s very concerning that we should have a government that is more concerned about a witch hunt around a few individuals who are simply doing a professional job…personally I have nothing to hide with regards my role in the privatization process. I was never in a position to make decisions in terms of who gets which assets. All the ones I was involved in really involves Zambian individuals who were being empowered, none of them were my friends or my relatives. But what’s most alarming and what’s surprising is that we are ready to spend money on a witch hunt, when there are more serious issues. If we really want a judge-led inquiry, let’s have a judge-led inquiry into the 42 fire trucks which were purchased at more than 75 per cent of the real value,” Chipimo said.

“We should also have a judge-led inquiry into why we are spending three times the amount of money to construct roads, why were are spending over US$4 million constructing a toll gate with its related infrastructure. These are the things, if we are really serious, we should spend money trying to get to the bottom of. We should spend money trying to understand why individual ministers who have been told by the constitutional court that they were illegally in office and need to pay back the money that they earned have not done so. These are the areas that if we are really serious about the challenges that people are going through, if we are serious that’s what we should be conducting our inquires into… yes it is important to look at this question of privatization and what happened. But not to look at it as a witch hunt for purposes of undermining a few individuals who are causing you sleepless nights.”