 I may simply say, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and I must recognize the presence of the media as well. Very important to disseminating the activities of this important ceremony. Gwenyama, let me appreciate your invitation to this function. Be the guest of honor. Sometimes we in the public office take it for granted that we shall always be the guests of honor. It is not like that. So I'm grateful for your invitation to this auspicious ceremony, Nkwala ceremony. Let me reinforce the theme of this ceremony, the launch of pride, promoting reconciliation, and national unit. I want to draw on the theme of this ceremony by saying the presence of the multitudes here today clearly confirms that the theme is the right one, unit in this our lovely country. The presence of traditional leaders from all over Zambia and truly and for the people of this province know why I'm saying this, to have Senior Chief Mbakwamba here representing the Chewa Kingdom is really most appreciated at this ceremony. And indeed others from elsewhere, including from other countries, Zikomakwamba, for bringing people from all walks of life together here at this ceremony. Peace, stability, security are important ingredients for any society to develop. I must emphasize that the role of ceremonies like Nkwala to bring our people together in this manner contributes towards that stability, that tolerance, that willingness and preparedness to dialogue when we have issues amongst ourselves. That's what mature societies do. And we want to encourage you Nkwenyama and your crowd and the crowd of others that work with you and also to extend the same message to other traditional leaders in our country, church leaders in our country to bring our people together under our motto, one Zambia, one Neshi. This is the way it should be. Let me indicate the importance of that platform of peace and stability, security for development. This government working with you as partners will continue delivering, continue working the path of development. This year we have dubbed it the year 2024 as the year of economic expansion for jobs, for business opportunities and also for sustainable social support. So you can see that unity, security, peace, stability are prerequisites to the developmental agenda and to look after those that are less able in our societies. And just to highlight a few issues around here, Nkwenyama, your government embarked on the construction of policies across the country. And that is continuing in NS this year so that we can deliver a dignified and decent working environment for our partners, the traditional leaders, as we embark or push, drive the road towards development. Very important. And I want to confirm that this process will continue until all your colleagues are taken care of so we can be engaging in a better environment. I must indicate that this government, your Royal Highness Nkwenyama and other Royal Highnesses will continue delivering infrastructure development as a backbone of our economic and social development. Very important to reinforce the message that we committed even when we are still in opposition in Nkwenyama, that when we come in office, the Chadiza-Chipata road will be tired. And I'm glad to confirm that in the 2024 budget we're provided for resources to tar the Chadiza-Chipata road. So this road will be tired. That's our commitment made long time ago and is now getting to be realized. Also Nkwenyama are the traditional leaders from here to confirm that the Kattete-Chanida road is now firmly being contracted out and the works shall commence, if they've not commenced already, to tar that Kattete-Chanida on the Mozambique border. And I want to emphasize that to the government of Tete province, wherever the government is seated, that we want to make sure that our roads on the Zambian side are good, our roads on the Mozambican side are good so we can engage in trade and investment, decent trade and investment between our two countries. Very important. I must also confirm that the works on the Chipata-Bubi road will continue. I must confirm that the Lundazi-Chama road works will continue, as my colleagues already indicated. And Mayor of Chipata, we are alive to importance of the Chipata township roads. So let's work together in that space. And I can confirm that Mayor of Chipata, let's just get the job done. We are on it and on it in a proper way, despite the financial challenges that we face, the debt burden that we face. And I'm glad to announce here in Eastern province that of the two aspects of the debt restructuring, one component is now done. The last two countries that have not signed on the official creditors, China and India have signed. And I'm very pleased to indicate that. That these two countries have signed on the debt restructuring to dismantle the debt mountain that we inherited. In our long economy, we are getting there, working steadily, definitely we're getting there. And now we are turning our attention to the private creditors that we hope to be able to put to bed soon. And that will create room for us to drive more of the developmental projects that we've committed to the people of Zander. Very important to all of us in the country. And I want to invite my colleagues in the opposition. These are the issues where we rally together. We put politics aside and work together to dismantle the terrible debt mountain, which is a legal issue. We are not pointing fingers at you. We know you are the ones who brought it, but we are ready to solve it. But let's work together. That's the way it should be. Not to worry about that. We are one Zambia, one National. Government is a continuing machine. It doesn't stop when one party leaves, another one comes in. We must continue working and improving the country and the good of the children and the old and the differently abled and those that need support in our communities. Gwenyama, let me confirm something you touched on. CDF is a flagship program to us. And CDF shall continue despite messages, negative messages, because it's the center of our decentralization program. It's the center of our devolution program to take excessive power away from Lusaka, where the biggest thieves live, the biggest corrupt people live in Lusaka. So we want to take money away from them and bring it here in Chippata. So that the people of Chippata, the people of Mutenguleni, the people of Kattete, the people of Chadiza, and the people of Chama, Kuaakambomo, can make decisions and decide on priorities of development for them, such as educational infrastructure, water and sanitation, such as health, as we have had. It's a very important instrument for us to deliver resources closer to the people and let the people decide their priorities so that everything is not decided in Lusaka. Having told you that the most corrupt live in Lusaka, we want to carpet them and take away the resources. If they follow the resources in Chippata, we will ask you to do a citizen's arrest and arrest them from here in Chippat and throw them in the jail in Chippat. But they will not be allowed to come here. So CDF will continue focusing on women, youth, and other empowerment programs and also giving our skills to those of our children who cannot go to university or teacher training college. We want them to learn to be plumbers, to be carpenters, to be metal workers so that we can drive our economies, local economies, in our jurisdictions, working with the traditional leaders, working with the church, working with others. Let me indicate, Gwenyama, that your government worked very hard to deliver fertilizer, to deliver seed on time and the people responded and planted and planted well. Unfortunately, we have no control over the rains and the rains have sort of disturbed us. This drought has come at a wrong time when our people have responded to the message of growing food for themselves and extra to sell to those in the urban areas. Gwenyama and the other traditional leaders, we want to say that your government is alive to this drought, your government will work with you and other institutions so that we can do three things amidst the drought. Number one, we confirm that this government will work hard to make sure that its people do not go hungry because of the drought. We're putting in place measures to ensure that food is available to our people, but we must work together as one unity to deliver Chitukuku to all our people. Food is the center of development. Without food, people cannot work in factories. People cannot work in offices. So we are committed, number one, Gwenyama, that we work together to ensure that our areas that are hit by drought, eastern province, southern province, Lusaka province, central province, western province, and parts of Copper Belt and northwestern province are provided with reasonably enough food for them to eat, to feed on. Number two, Gwenyama, this weather is now sending a message that we must redouble our efforts to do irrigation, farming through irrigation. To irrigate, we need to harvest water to dam our streams, and I love eastern because of its annulations. You go up, you go down. Easy to make dams, to make weirs. So your government will work very hard to extract, to harvest surface water as well as underground water through Bohol so we can irrigate even in the dry season we can continue growing some food for our people, including them being able to feed themselves at the household level. So that's number two. Number three, Gwenyama, we want to work together with you and other traditional leaders to climate mitigate. Climate change is responsible for this drought. So we want to make sure that we work together to mitigate the climate change. We must cut less trees. Gwenyama, Gwenyama, Gwenankosyaman cause, let us work with other traditional leaders to ask our people to stop destroying trees. Let us plant trees. Let us engage in our daily activities in a manner that will protect the damage to the climate and then we can have more rain coming on to us. And lastly, on this call, we want to pray to God that like the songs, the impis we're singing from Korera to Chilala. For those who don't understand, Ngoni Chilala means drought. It's the same way in Tonga, Gwenyama, Chilala means the rains are late or they will not come. Chilala, Chilala, same. So we want to make sure that we pray to God to allow us to have a bit more water so that the younger part of the crop that we planted may be resuscitated and we can have something. We pray to God to give us water, to give us rain so that at least our rivers and groundwater can be recharged. So when we sink the bores, when we dump, we can have water which we can use for irrigation. That's our cry to God. And I can see the prayers may be answered soon. The clouds are changing color from white to dark so it may rain even today. So thank you to our God. Thank you to our God. Thank you to our members of the community who are praying. We still need the rain a lot more than ever before. So I conclude by saying we acknowledge the role of leadership. So we thank all our leaders, all categories of our leaders for bringing our people together from within our country, from our neighboring countries. Because if we have no peace in Mozambique, like Cabo Delgado, we would have no peace in Zambia. If we have no peace in Malawi, we'll have no peace in Zambia. If we have no peace in Zambia, we'll be exporting trouble to our neighboring countries. So Zambia needs to remain peaceful, united. So is Mozambique, so is Malawi, so is South Africa, so is Tanzania. So we need peace, security, stability. And leaders are the ones that should take this responsibility to unite our people. At this call, I want to repeat my message. This country's Zambia shall remain a unitary country. This country's Zambia shall remain a unitary country. This president will not be the one that allows the country to divide. This president will walk KK's road to reunite this country, deepen our unity. We're already united, but we deepen our unity as one Zambia, one nation. As one Zambia, one Zambia, and when I say one nation, you must answer one people. One Zambia, one nation, one nation, one people. I urge all of us to reinforce this unity, especially when we have a drought like this, when we are challenged. Korela, as the song was singing by the Impis, from Korela to Chilala, meaning drought. But I want to go to another step before Korela, from COVID to Korela to Chilala. We shall overcome when we work together. So we call upon all of us to remain united. I commend the Nkwala Organizing Committee for the great job you've done. I commend all the sponsors, all of you without exception. I don't want to mention names only, one or two. All of the sponsors, thank you for your contributions, including individual contributors. We appreciate what you're doing to bring us together through the successful Nkwala 2024. I must also indicate that, we wish you good health. We wish you good health to continue providing leadership to our community here. We want to wish good health to all our traditional leaders so you can lead our people in unity, in diversity, in development. May I say once more, thank you to God, because only you can answer our prayers around these droughts. Hear our prayers. We, your children, are praying. We have our limits, and this is one of our limits. Only you can deal with this. And again, look upon on us, your children, not just in Zambia, because this drought is in Zambia, it's in Malawi, it's in Mozambique, it is in part of Tanzania, it is in Zimbabwe, it is part of South Africa. So it's a regional problem, Botswana and Namibia. So there are too many of we, your children, who are crying to you to hear us. So I cannot say more than others have been saying through various prayers. But Ziko Mukwambiri, Mulungu Adarise, thank you for your kind attention. Thank you.