Police have confirmed that a total of 11 police stations whose reconstruction cost is estimated to be about K5.5 million (about K500,000 per police station) has been wasted and will eventually be borne by the very community members, a major economic setback for the country.
This follows the recent incidents of chemical attacks on Zambian citizens by what has now been described as organized criminal activities, which resulted in the public excising mob justice, which resulted in some police stations on the copperbelt, Lusaka and other provinces, to be burnt down, an act that has also been suspected to have been pre-meditated and planned.
In an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, on March, 10th 2020, Police Spokesperson Esther Katongo, said though it is difficult to give an exact estimate the total cost of rebuilding the damaged posts because the police posts destroyed are in different sizes, she however bemoaned the fact that most of the police stations that were gutted are community based and built, meaning that they were built by the contributions from members of the community themselves.
Looking at the recent commissioned police post named after the first lady Esther Lungu Police Post in Kitwe, which was reported to have been constructed at an average cost of about K500,000 (five hundred thousand kwacha). This gives an estimated total cost of reconstructing the 11 gutted police posts countrywide at K5.5 million.
“So, community members need to be made aware that they are burning what is theirs, because most of the community police posts are built by the community members contributions and donations. As police we have the project and maintenance unit, which looks into the construction and rehabilitation of the police posts, but because these police posts are community based, it will ideally the community themselves to rebuild them through the local community leadership. So us as Police will work with the community leaders to rebuild them, once they are done with the re-construction, then we go to inspect and redeploy our officers”, said Katongo.
She cited the incident at Mwembeshi, where the residents damaged the police post, which is upto now, not yet rebuilt, saying it will take the residents and their local leaders to rebuild it because it was a community based police post. Katongo said the government can only move in through the constituency Development Funds (CDF).
‘‘Us, when such a thing happens we just remove our officers from there, then allow members of the public to put resources together and rebuild, not the police or government to rebuild. Maybe government can come in when it comes to CDF money, but for us as police once you damage the police post, we just pull out and wait for you as community to rebuild.
The Police Spokesperson further said, that it’s upto the community to build a police post to the standards required by the police, failure to which, the police does not take their officers to the station. She called on the community to guard their properties jealously because it’s their resources used in the construction of the police posts which are then a shared responsibility.
The mostly affected provinces for burnt down police posts include the Copperbelt, Lusaka and North Western. A check by ZBT on the recently gutted police post in Lusaka’s Kanyama township show that the community have started rebuilding the police post. This Police post was damaged by the mob after the confusion that resulted from chemical and gass attacks.
As of now, investigations are still ongoing, arrests have been made with calls for finding the masterminds growing. But with delays in announcing progress made, members of the public are now concerned that the truth behind these chemical attacks will never be known and risks to die a natural death.
