State House is frustrated with FIC report – Chanda

Amos Chanda

Special Assistant to the President for Press and Public Relations, Amos Chanda says State House is looking with frustration at the contents of the Financing trends report by the Financial Intelligence Centre.

Mr. Chanda says the report contains extraordinary allegations.

He says President Lungu is listening and studying the matters, but that he will not give any deadlines in which to act.

He adds that a major decision will be made in due course with regards the decision by the Financial Intelligence Centre to public raw intelligence data.

Mr. Chanda says this why he does not want to comment on the FIC report in order not to jeopardize anything.

The presidential press aide however, feels the FIC Director General Mary Tshuma has put pressure on the law enforcement agencies to act on the report her centre recently released.

He was speaking to journalists in Lusaka last evening shortly after he attended a public discussion on accountability in Zambia hosted by the Oasis Forum.

And Mr. Chanda says civil society organizations have a democratic right to make their own opinions on the operations of the FIC.

He however, states that he found it extraordinary that he could sit in a room full of supposedly well informed people, yet go home asking himself whether he was in the right place.

Mr. Chanda is wondering whether it is fair or right for the civil society organizations to attack one government law enforcement agency and praise the other.