Mwinilunga Member of Parliament – MP, Newton Samakayi has accused the Zambia National Service – ZNS Officers that have been assigned to secure the mine of taking party in the illegal mining activities that he said is happening at Kasenseli gold mine.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, the lawmaker questioned why cases of illegal gold mine at the mining site are increasing when there are officers from security wings stationed to look after the place.
Samakayi said the security wings must be questioned for allowing illegal gold mining at Kasenseli gold mine in Mwinilunga District of the North-Western Province.
“The Zambia police there were told and they arrested some people and they were released, why were they released? It means now what was happening under the former ruling PF is repeating itself under the UPND Government.”
“I was talking about theft of gold then in PF and you know what happened there were a lot of people who were involved some of them lost their jobs because of gold theft. Now it has started again, so different people but people of the same position have started stealing.” He remarked.
“But you see we have heard reports on how gold is stolen and those people who are stealing are not acting alone they are acting with other people including the villagers and some officers from Zambia Police.”
“So ZNS and Police Officers in Mwinilunga must be questioned because they should know what is going on at the gold mining site and everybody must know as nobody was spared during PF and even now, some security and connected individuals must be involved for the theft of gold to be successful.”
The lawmarker has since called on the removal of all the ZNS personnel whom he said have been there since the mine was closed and replace them with fresh ones.
“You cannot keep the same people for more than one year and they are looking after the precious stones like that they will end up start stealing. The nature of the job is that every after 6 months they are replaced but that has not happened at Kasenseli gold mine.”
He said People must be responsible whenever they are given responsivity they should incur it with utmost integrity. “Stealing those assets that you have been given I think that is the irresponsibility of the highest order and people with such character must be punished.”
Meanwhile Samakayi revealed that there has been an escalations of reported illegal gold mining in the past two weeks.
“Am the area Member of Parliament and I have a network of people on the ground and I know what happens in every corner of my constituency because of the reliable network I have.” He told ZBT.
