Effective Midnight Random Declarations

There I was minding my business while desperately looking forward to the public holiday the next day. I had a little bit of money in my pocket to spend the next day and my life was just normal. It was until I heard the rumour that fuel had been increased. My first question, is that rumour on Zambia Watchdog? When the confirmation came through that it was on Watchdog I breathed a sigh of relief. You have to read that site with a pinch of scepticism. Unfortunately, it was not a rumour fuel prices were increasing with effect midnight. How? Why? What the hell! And with that random pronouncement my friends, is how my life just became more expensive.

 

I do understand that prices will eventually rise and they cannot stay the same forever, but even my pockets were traumatised at the “with effect midnight” price increase. Some pronouncements should just not be made anyhow, such statements have far reaching consequences. I had to scrounge for every ngwee that I could find just to fill up my fuel tank. The first time I had ever done that. You can imagine it had to take the drastic rise in the price of fuel to fill up my tank; I was not impressed at all.

The removal of the subsidy maybe right or not, I do not wish to dwell into the details of it. My personal opinion is that we should have been prepared well in advance that an increase was coming and not just making midnight declarations. Maybe people haven’t noticed but I aint Bill Gates and some of us make budgets. It is not like I have tonnes of money piled up somewhere waiting to be spent. It is already hard enough to live in Lusaka with rising expenses and then to add unplanned fuel increases which is unwelcome. The only way such an increase would make sense is if I too could walk into my boss’s office and say, “With effect at midnight you are going to give me a salary increment.”Oh no but I like many other employees we have to be civil, we need to negotiate and consult. Wish someone consulted me about the fuel increase.

This week when I open the Games Stores leaflet, I will be looking at the prices for bicycles just in case, I am caught unaware with another effective midnight declaration. I guess I just have to suck it up and brace myself for the general price increases. In the meantime, fingers crossed nothing random comes up anytime soon. In the event that it does, shall we consult each other please?