By Peter Phiri:
A renowned Agriculture Expert Leonard Chimwaza has welcomed the decision by government to remove Lobin Lowe as Chairperson of the AIP Cluster Committee and replace him with Minister of Lands Sam kawale.
On Tuesday Gospel Kazako who is government spokesperson confirmed of the changes saying leadership of the cluster cabinet committees is rotational.
Commenting on the change, Chimwaza said he sees nothing abnormal with the changes saying this will just help to inject fresh ideas in the administration of AIP.
“Government would like to have new leadership to manage AIP. Essentially it’s about injecting new energy. Recently there have been issues hovering around this year’s AIP so certainly what this change means is government just wants to inject new ideas in the implementation of AIP,” said Chimwaza.
Chimwaza observed that while AIP might fall under the Ministry of Agriculture as the line ministry, there are several stakeholders that are involved like the Ministry of Trade as well as Transporters under ministry of Transport so the new leadership will be across the board.
Government is yet to release the total number of beneficiaries for this year’s programme.
Last week the Ministry of Agriculture refuted social media reports that government has been duped 30 billion kwacha by a British company that was contracted to supply fertiliser for this year’s programme.
