Kampamba Refuses To Address Aggrieved ZNBC Staff In Presence of Private Media
INFORMATION minister and chief government spokesperson Kampamba Mulenga today refused to address aggrieved ZNBC staff on the many challenges at the national broadcaster because journalists from private media institutions were present.
Meanwhile, the Zambia Union of Broadcasters and other Information Disseminators and National Union of Communication Workers have accused Mulenga of causing all the problems the institution is facing.
The two unions that summoned Kampamba to address workers at ZNBC accused the PF Kalulushi member of parliament of failing to discipline what they termed “mismanaged management”.
The minister, who arrived at ZNBC after 14:00 hours, where staff eagerly waited for her in the Cinema Hall, went straight to director general Richard Mwanza’s office.
She later sent labour commissioner Chanda Kajiya, who was in her entourage, to inform the union that she only wanted ZNBC workers in the meeting and not the private media.
But the union leaders sent word to the minister that they would not allow the private media to leave.
However, Kajiya insisted that the private media leaves and warned them of dissolution over their behaviour.
He insisted that the minister had a right to screen who covered her meeting and that it was not up to the union to decide.
The threats did not make the union change their mind, prompting the minister to cancel the meeting and schedule a press briefing at her office tomorrow.
The union leaders exchanged bitter words with Kajiya, leaving him puzzled.
“Who are you to dissolve the union? Why are you even here? We do not have a dispute but all we want is to present to the Minister our problems. So why are you threatening us? The private media have to be here and after our presentation to the minister, they will then leave,” said one of the union leaders.
In response, Kajiya said: “Usually, if you invite the minister to the meeting like this, she would determine the nature of what the discussion looks like. There are certain times when it’s a closed meeting. She wants to have a closed door meeting and that is why she said ‘let’s take away the media.”
After a failed attempt to have the meeting take place, Chomba Yumbe addressed a furious workforce.
He had a tough time breaking the news that the minister had refused to address them.
“How can she suggest to have a press briefing without meeting us first? What will she say at that briefing since she has not met us?” asked one furious worker in the audience.
The uncompromising workers bombarded Yumbe with questions, but the union president said he had no answers for them.
“You are venting that anger on a wrong person. Let’s wait for what the press briefing will bring about, let us be calm,” said Yumbe as the workers chanted “Awe, awe!”
And in a statement prepared for the minister, which was never presented, Yumbe said the national broadcaster had been neglected by the Ministry of Information in terms of operational funding to sustain its operations.
“Hon Minister, ZNBC carries three Television and three Radio mandate channels, but there is no sustainable funding line to run these channels. Previous managements lobbied government through Secretary to Cabinet to ensure that line ministries pay for coverage accorded to them under their ministry programmes. This good initiative, which helped the coffers of ZNBC, was stopped in 2015, with the change of management at ZNBC. We can only speculate as to why this happened but the gap in revenue collection is affecting all of us today,” according to Yumbe.
” Relocating of TV Levy collections. The workers do not want to bring old debates around this issue but the point of contention is the funding mechanism of TV Levy to ZNBC has not been resolved yet the effects of this realisation is what happened when salaries for December were only paid yesterday. The law as it stands today is that TV levy will be collected by IBA once the logistics are in place. Now is not time to argue why IBA, but the fact is, it is already hurting ZNBC and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that. For now, we can only conclude that the move is and will hurt ZNBC. Multi-choice Dividends: Honourable Minister, you are aware that before digital migration ZNBC had a healthy relationship with Multichoice with a partnership of 49 per cent shares in the Zambian company. However, the digital migration policy spearheaded by your Ministry brought in TOPSTAR which effectively competed against the interest of ZNBC in Multichoice, especially that TOPSTAR became a pay TV channel and not only a carrier of signals. Though we hear the matter is in court, the reality on the ground is that Multichoice has stopped giving ZNBC the lucrative dividend that was subsidising our operational costs. The question that we pose to you Minister is: what is your ministry doing to cover the loss of revenue that ZNBC is experiencing as a result?”
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