HH TELLS NEW MINISTERS TO PUT ZAMBIA FIRST AND DELIVER RESULTS

As President Hakainde Hichilema officially shapes the administration for his newly inaugurated second term, a stern and uncompromising directive has been issued to members of the executive branch. During the recent swearing-in of key Cabinet ministers, the Head of State made it crystal clear that national interests must supersede all personal and partisan ambitions. The administration's overarching policy framework—the Grow Zambia Agenda—must now pivot decisively from conceptual planning to aggressive, measurable implementation that directly touches the lives of ordinary citizens across the country's ten provinces. President Hichilema cautioned the newly minted and returning ministers against complacency, urging them to spend less time in protracted meetings and bureaucratic paperwork and more time on the ground executing developmental projects. The administration has placed heavy emphasis on fast-tracking economic growth, driving job creation, expanding business opportunities, and optimizing government revenues. For an economy striving to cement its post-debt-restructuring recovery, the leadership insists that macroeconomic gains must translate into visible improvements at the household level, alleviating the high cost of living felt by many Zambians. Crucially, the President addressed long-standing systemic leakages within public service delivery, expressing zero tolerance for corruption, resource mismanagement, and professional negligence. Highlighting critical sectors such as healthcare, education, and infrastructure, he warned that public officials caught undermining state resources or neglecting their duties—such as the persistent disappearance of essential medicines or professional misconduct in public facilities—would face severe individual consequences without institutional protection. The message was unequivocal: public office is an explicit position of public trust and patriotic duty, not an entitlement. Political analysts view this aggressive posture