The Lusaka Mayor Mr Daniel Chisenga says a lot of progress has been made towards the planning of 100 years of Lusaka celebrations. Lusaka Mayor Mr Daniel Chisenga says a lot of progress has been made towards the planning of a 100 years of Lusaka celebrations.
Speaking to journalists in Lusaka recently, Mr Chisenga said two committees had been formed and tasked with planning the event.
“Progress is being made towards the preparation for 100 years. We have come up with a committee that has been tasked to do all the preparations for the 100 years. We also have an internal committee which is working tirelessly which has engaged other stake holders particularly the private sector and we are so happy with the progress which they have made and the council committee and the external committee which is composed of stake holders from the city and private companies are working closely so that all the programmes are closely monitored and harmonized,” he said.
And Mr Chisenga said the council was looking forward to celebrating the 100 years in a clean environment.
“We definitely want to celebrate in a clean environment and as performance based contractors will play a key role in ensuring that the celebrations are done in a very conducive atmosphere. So that people who are coming to Lusaka will see a city which is appealing and befitting the status of capital city,” Mr Chisenga said.
Recently, the Lusaka City Council announced that it had set aside over KR 48 million for the various waste management and road maintenance activities in the city.
This was when Mr Chisenga signed performance based contracts with eight local under a three year programme which would see an enhancement in the area of garbage collection in order to clean up the city. The city of Lusaka will on the 21st of July be a 100 years old. He also disclosed that talks to expand Lusaka were still underway.
“We are still in talks with the government regarding the expansion of the city. We believe as a council that this is key to our urban planning. We have so far engaged a number of stakeholders who have come on board to support the council in a number of ways so that we can upgrade some of the slums that we have and also a programme of building more houses for the city. The main problem is that in Lusaka we are running on 40000 hectors of land which has run out,” said Mr Chisenga; “Government has shown commitment and interest in the request that the city council has so far made. We are earnestly awaiting response from government to ensure that our request could be considered because we believe that once this matter is handled and succeeds, it will be able to cater for the deficiency that we have in terms of allocation for residence in Lusaka.”