By SANFROSSA MANYINDA
ZAMBIA should seriously start looking at women land rights and natural resources in extractive industry, Save the Environment and People Agency (SEPA) has said
SEPA Chief Executive Officer, Mailes Zulu, therefore encouraged traditional leaders to offer land to women who were in bee-keeping and other innovations.
Ms Zulu said women in such a business needed to own their own land so that they could conduct their farming and business without disturbances.
She said bee-keeping needed land ownership because the apiary needed to be secured so that they could be protected from people.
Ms Zulu was speaking in an interview with the Daily Nation in Kitwe.
“We need to protect the apiary from people who cut and burn trees because such activities disturbs where the bees get pollen from.
“Let us push for land ownership as it is the only way the community will be protected from intruders like investors and other individuals that are in a habit of grabbing land,”
Ms Zulu noted that the cutting and burning down of trees would hinder progress of the business and development of the Community because the land will not have been secured.
She observed that this would force women who were in this kind of a business to remain the same and continue living in poverty.
Ms Zulu said that SEPA had with its cooperating partners taken it upon himself to train more bee keepers in rural areas of North-Western Province.
She said this would help protect apiaries from bush fires and cutting down the trees as many people would know their rights to land especially women.
