By SANFROSSA MBERI
HUNDREDS of Kitwe residents yesterday thronged Mufungo Milling Ltd Trading as Nkana Milling depot in Kapoto township and queued for hours on end for the now acutely scarce mealie-meal despite continued assurances from the government that there is enough of the staple food in the country.
This rush and scramble for the staple food at Nkana Milling was after word went round that the depot had received new stock of mealie meal which was selling at K170 while it has been fetching as much as K270 in some other outlets.
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A spot check by the Daily Nation found two long queues separated by gender waiting to buy the commodity that seemed not to be enough for the crowd that had besieged the outlet.
Heavily armed police officers had to be deployed in anticipation of a scramble and riot as residents struggled to buy the commodity which is now being limited to one bag per family and could only be accessed after the production of the National Registration Card (NRC) in some instances.
Some desperate buyers who could not endure queuing up for the commodity had to buy through the elderly and expecting mothers who were exempted from lining up at a fee.
The desperate buyers were seen paying different amounts of money to expecting mothers, the elderly and youths to buy the commodity.
According to a few buyers interviewed, they engaged the elderly and pregnant women to buy while youths were engaged to carry the bags away from the premises.
Just last week, Copperbelt Province Minister Elisha Matambo assured the people that queuing for mealie meal would be a thing of the past as the province would be allocated 80 percent of the 30, 000 metric tonnes of maize that the Food Reserve Agency had offloaded on the market.
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