Q FM Africa's Modern Radio
The Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection [JCTR] has cautioned that the fuel pump price adjustment by almost 10 kwacha between December 2021 and April 2022 and the resultant adjustment in the commodity prices is inevitably going to hit hard on the majority of the zambian people whose incomes are already very low.
JCTR Executive Director, Alex Muyebe says according to a study report by Karl Pauw, Bernard Tembo and James Thurlow on “covid-19 in Zambia: impacts on production, poverty and food systems” published on 6th April 2021, poverty rate in Zambia increased by 4.3 percent due to the covid-19 pandemic.
Father Muyebe says the rising cost of living is just setting on course, and it looks likely that it is going to push more households into absolute poverty.
He says it is however yet to be seen if what government’s key commitments such as delivery on constituency development fund, social cash transfer programme and implementation of free education programme, among others will be enough to cushion zambian households from the pangs of the rising cost of living when the fuel pump prices still remain very high in the short term.
He has questioned what government is saying to a poor household in chibolya compound which is not a beneficiary of any of the above listed programmes and yet it now has to pay more for food and other basic necessities.
Meanwhile Father Muyebe says a decline in inflation rate does not mean that prices have necessarily reduced saying all it means is that the rate at which these prices are rising over the comparable period has reduced.