No more personal to holder vehicles – ST

Secretary to the Treasury Felix Nkulukusa says government officials will no longer be entitled to personal to holder vehicles.

And Mr. Nkulukusa says permanent secretaries , ministers and senior government officials like him will no longer sit on boards of Parastatal bodies to enable them provide uncompromised oversight.

The Secretary to the Treasury said this when he appeared before the committee on parastatal bodies which is chaired by Zambezi east Member of Parliament Brian Kambita.

Mr. Nkulukusa’s statement was in response to a question by Mr Kambita and Luena Member of Parliament (MP) Mubita Anakoka who inquired on the appointment of permanent secretaries on boards.

He says Government will ensure that qualified people are appointed on boards.

And Mr. Nkulukusa has stated that ministers and other senior government officials will only be entitled to one utility vehicle each and in the event that the official vehicle goes to the garage they will have to use pool vehicles.

He states that going forward, the rest of the cars will be used as pool vehicles this is in an effort to do away with issues of spending colossal sums of money on expensive vehicles when companies are making losses.

He adds that government will now be strict on the use of government number plates as no government official will be allowed to put a government number plate on a private vehicle.

The secretary to the treasury states that secretary to cabinet will soon issue a circular on the use of vehicles and number plates for government vehicles.

Meanwhile, Mr Nkulukusa has announced that government plans to use debt swap initiatives to deal with loans sitting at Development Bank of Zambia involving some of the Government suppliers.

He states that the Development Bank of Zambia failed to perform because of political interference while some institutions have not been paying back loans.

Mr. Nkulukusa was responding to a question on why the country should continue with the DBZ while it has proved to be underperforming and insolvent.