20100927
africanews

More than 3,000 former employees of Macha Mission's Brethren of Christ Church, in remote area of Chief Macha of the Tonga people of Southern Zambia in the rich farming District of Choma, have been displaced; and more than 100 of these, have their houses burnt to ashes, to give way for large scale production of Jatropha cultivation.

According to Zambia Land Alliance coordinator for Southern Province Eslony Hantimbula speaking to local Radio Chikuni, more than 100 houses belonging to former employees of the Brethren of Christ Church were burnt to ashes by people alleged to be bailiffs acting on behalf of the church.

The houses were allegedly burnt on Thursday after some former employees of the church refused to vacate the area to pave way for Jatropha cultivation.

Hatimbula said that the former employees were given land by the church as part of the retirement package but now the church decided to lease the already occupied land to a white man intending to embark on large scale jatropha cultivation, leading to the displacement of more than 3,000 people.

When reached for a comment by AfricaNews, Officials at the Provincial office of the Ministry of Agriculture in Livingstone showed ignorance of the matter asking for time to investigate. But Environmental Council of Zambia (ECZ) Provincial Principal Inspector Fred Muyano said that, for any large scale project to be undertaken, feasibility studies need to be looked into first.

“As ECZ we must get involved when people’s lives are at stake. We need to carry out an environmental assessment impact and give recommendations later to the government. A project that moves away 3000 people is large enough to be taken seriously. Unfortunately this matter has not been communicated to us, meaning there could be something wrong with it”, he said.

The area has seen a lot of infrastructure development taking root in the past few months such as a local Radio Station, malaria research centre, a hospital and now a University Centre for technology studies is under way.

Macha is a remote place with its inhabitants depending in peasantry farming and grain cultivation for a living and critics to large scale cultivation of energy crops say that the intended project will have disastrous impacts on the already poor people.

“Though the idea of energy produced locally is good, on the other hand people’s lives should be looked into seriously. These people depend on farming and now they are losing vast pieces of land. How are they going to survive especially that most them are retrenches and depend on land for a living”, Darius Mulenga from Zambia Rights for Young People, said.