SUNS  4361 Wednesday 27 January 1999

Lusaka, Jan 25 (IPS/Namasiku Ilukena) - Zambian government is seeking ways to deliver 63 metric tonnes of emergency food to about 1.4 million  starving people, most of whom have been cut off from supplying sources.

President Frederick Chiluba said Friday it would be hard to transport the relief to the needy since 44 bridges, linking the starving population with various cities of Zambia, have been washed away by the flooding of last year.

Chance Kagaghe, chief executive of Zambia's Food Reserve Agency, said the Southern African country of about ten million people has recorded a cereal deficit of 650,000 metric tonnes of the staple crop - maize - and that unless sufficient grain is imported there could be loss of life. Although the agency has placed an import order for 400,000 metric tonnes of maize, officials in various districts say very little has reached the needy.

Patrick Lilema, a community leader in the western Zambian ward of Ikwichi, said relief aid, earmarked for Zambia's food-for-work project, has not been delivered to the villagers. Under the scheme, the villagers build dams, canals and repair roads.

The villagers, particularly those in Macuu and Nakalomo, are bitter that the Chiluba government has failed to give them food as promised through the Keepers Zambia Foundation and the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) - the two main Non-Governmental Organisations (ngos)
-- charged with the distribution of relief food.

The villagers claim that the food is being deliberately withheld from them as punishment for their support for the opposition Barotse Patriotic Front of Mutangelwa Imasiku and Agenda for Zambia of
Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika. They say they have been surviving on mango since November.

It is, however, unlikely that Chiluba will turn a blind eye as the villagers share common borders with Angola's Eastern Provinces of Moxico and Cuando-Cubango, under the control of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebel Movement.

Barotseland, the original name for Western Province, has the highest number of illicit weapons in Zambia. Shortly before Christmas Home Affairs Minister, Katele Kalumba, said more than 350 guns, mostly AK-47 assault rifles, and rounds of ammunition had been seized in Barotseland under 'search and recover' operation.

"There are many weapons out there than have been recovered," Kalumba said, adding that those still in possession of them could be contemplating using them for 'criminal purposes'.

Famine also has struck Southern, Eastern, Northern and Luapula provinces. Luapula is the home province of President Chiluba.

Noel Mvula, a businessman, claimed some of the relief were diverted to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where it is fetching triple its price in Zambia. Mvula, a former deputy minister for information in the post-independence government of President Kenneth Kaunda, said he recently traveled to the Copperbelt border post of Kasumbalesa where he found trucks loaded with maize from Zimbabwe, meant for starving Zambians, being off-loaded prior to transportation
across the DRC frontier.

Copperbelt Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ngosa Simbyakula, immediately sent a team of police investigators to probe the alleged smuggling. The allegation was confirmed by the police.

Zambia's Agriculture Food and Fisheries deputy minister, Ackson Sejani, described the racketeering as the 'worst scandal' ever perpetrated in Zambia. He said about 2,600 tonnes, meant for 60,000 starving villagers in his Kalomo parliamentary constituency in Southern Province, also
passed through the frontier in December.