Why use Indo - Zambia Bank and not ZANACO to pay for travel documents?

Column:
11/01/2012

The Immigration department in any given country IS one of the many departments of government like Transport, Communications, Energy, Water, Mines and Minerals, Forestry and Tourism, Foreign Affairs, Education, Lands as well as Health.....etc,  that can aid the revenue department in quickly meeting revenue collection targets for a particular year.

The question one would however ask is, have these departments and Ministries performed up to their status as money spinners through the services they provide for Zambia? Perhaps one may not actually be wrong to say that actually most of these Ministries and departments have in the past not been able to contributed as expected to the country's revue coffers.

Now it has been decided that all the money paid for documents issued by the Passport Office should be done so through Indo-Zambia Bank. I will give this new payment procedure just one month and thereafter three months and then check on how much money will be collected from such public services provided. We shall compare the one month, three months and six months of payments made through Indo-Zambia Bank to the same period when you my brothers and sisters at this department in particular were directly responsible for charging and receiving the payments.

We will also assess among those seeking these services from the Immigration Department whether this new payment procedure is convenient and readily available as and when they seek such.

We shall be assessing how will be the attitude of the workers at the Immigration Department now that they "may" never be handling money for the public services they provide.

We will also check and interrogate what is in this deal for Indo-Zambia Bank. We hope too that the Bank which is owned by both India and Zambia will be able to show us how the money collected from sales of services under this new procedure will be transmitted to government coffers and whether the Bank is allowed to reinvest in itself such money as a way of increasing Zambia's stake in its operations. We shall also be asking the Ministry responsible how they arrived at Indo-Zambia Bank and not Zambia National Commercial Bank (ZANACO) or any other which have a rather wider network as this would have made it easy for citizens and other people to access such services. We will be able so to find out the accountability procedures put in place to ensure that all the money collected is accounted for. We will be asking Indo-Zambia Bank to disclose how much percentage, if this is how the deal is crafted, they will be getting from the KR370 paid for obtaining a Zambian Passport.

#more questions coming up#