HARRY Kalaba has charged that the PF government is endemically corrupt and that the only remaining thing is for the ruling party to add a clause in its constitution that sanctions corruption.

And Kalaba, who is Democratic Party (DP) president, has accused the PF leadership of having run out of governance ideas, hence resorting to promoting violence in the country.

Kalaba, in response to what made him resign from the government over a year ago, reiterated that corruption made him leave the PF administration.

“What made me to resign from the PF government is corruption! The levels of corruption in the PF government have become extremely endemic. I’m sure what is remaining for the PF is just to put corruption in their constitution. It’s (PF) dented with corruption and I didn’t want to be part of a corrupt regime,” Kalaba said when he featured on a special interview on Voice of Kalomo radio on Saturday afternoon.

The former Bahati PF member of parliament wondered why an agricultural town like Kalomo had no single turnery that made leather shoes, belts and handbags.

Kalaba asked further why Kalomo did not have a dairy company that made cheese and “all kinds of milk products.”

“Most of the farmers here are pastoralists – they are keeping animals. Kalomo has been forgotten and yet Kalomo was the first capital city [of Northern Rhodesia]. Then you wonder; where is the glory of the people of Kalomo?” Kalaba said.

“54 years after independence, there are no industries in Kalomo! The current regime doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going. I want to be part of a government system that is people-oriented. The Democratic Party wants the people of Kalomo to be liberated.”

The opposition leader regretted that while during the UNIP administration farmers were getting fertiliser at the right time, such was not the case under the current government.

“Fertiliser is going so late to farmers and yet this government has got money to buy those fire tenders! It has money to buy expensive ambulances! But this government has no money to employ teachers who are qualified to go and teach our children,” Kalaba lamented.

He pledged that a Democratic Party administration would prioritise agriculture and manufacturing.

“Farmers in Kalomo grow cotton and we want an industry that will be making shirts. We have the potential but what we don’t have is focused leadership. As Harry Kalaba, I’m proposing a paradigm shift where every district must have a manufacturing industry,” Kalaba explained.

“Kaunda created NCZ (Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia) in Kafue and it was meant to produce fertiliser and some by-products went to the mines to be used as explosives. But now we are importing fertiliser from Russia! It comes into Dubai, then Dar es Salaam and then it comes into Zambia. What kind of people are we? How do you expect fertiliser to arrive on time?”

Kalaba added that once he assumed the Republican presidency, his government would “create something like the Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia in every province.”

“As Democratic Party, we’ll have a fertiliser plant in Southern, Western, Luapula, Northern, North-Western provinces and so on and so forth so that our farmers can easily access their fertiliser. What I’m talking about is not far-fetched!” Kalaba emphasised.