Kabanshi threatens to extend Livingstone council suspensions

Kabanshi threatens to extend Livingstone council suspensions

Livingstone, Feb 17, ZANIS– Local Government and Housing Minister Emerine Kabanshi has threatened to extend the suspension of Livingstone City Council should the councillors continue frustrating government efforts.

Ms. Kabanshi said her ministry was still assessing the operations of the Livingstone City Council in terms of service delivery to the people.

She accused the local authority of frustrating the vision of the PF government.

She was speaking in Livingstone today when she featured on a Vic Falls radio programme dubbed, "Check Point".

The Livingstone Council was recently suspended by Ms. Kabanshi.

"As a ministry, we are still assessing the Livingstone Council at the moment. And we want to see how the councillors were behaving. It is so frustrating. I mean the opposition UPND councillors are antagonising our vision for the council as PF. If that continues, l can extend the suspension,” she warned.

The Minister disclosed that government has already found a contractor to construct the famous Zimbabwe market which was allegedly razed down.

Ms. Kabanshi further said her ministry was addressing the issue of garbage collection to ensure that the city and Zambia as a whole were extremely clean.

She said government was committed to keeping Livingstone town clean ahead of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) conference in August this year.

The conference will be co-hosted by Zambia and neigbouring Zimbabwe.

Featuring on the same programme, Gender and Child Development Minister Inonge Wina called for equity between men and women if the conference was to be successfully held.

Mrs. Wina said men and women should not discriminate one another because their roles were in for a common goal.

And Tourism and Arts Minister Sylvia Masebo urged the Zambian people to remove politics from the UNWTO conference.

Ms. Masebo observed that Zambians were good at politicizing even straight forward events such as the UNWTO, a situation she said was retrogressive.

She said her ministry has incorporated a number of other ministries to ensure that the conference is a success.

She said the frequent visits of Cabinet ministers to the tourist capital, Livingstone, was an indication that government was read to put in place the adequate measures to host the over 155 member countries that are expected to attend the conference.