The National Registration Card Office annex in Ndola has been burnt to ashes.
Both Copperbelt Province Permanent Secretary, Elias Kamamga and Police Commissioner Charity Katanga confirmed the burning down of the office annex this afternoon.
Mr. Kamanga said almost all the documents that were kept in the annex have been burnt.
The PS said he was informed that the fire could have started in the early hours of yesterday morning.
Mr. Kamanga said that the incident is regrettable because the premise is manned by security officers who could have alerted the fire brigade on time.
He hoped there was no foul play involved and wondered why it took hours for the security guards to notice the fire.
And Mrs Katanga said Police has not yet established the extent of the damage but that investigations have been instituted.
She said the fire was put under control by the fire brigade by 15:30hrs yesterday.
Starting to fix electoral register?
In a country where ID’s are typewritten, say goodbye to all the records. It’s unbelievable that despite all the talk before 2011, we still don’t have electronic IDs. To some extent, I’m happy this happened, hoping we learn from this
It is defininately an act by UPND cadres and Lusambo will swear to than upon the great leader , His Excellence EL
These PF should stick to burn their own markets. They can’t jump to civil servants offices, just to cover up corruption accusations.
Kapyongo ministry yet again.
They now want to use such burnt up public offices to beg for funding hey?
Kambwili s party is scaring the PF mafias to a point where PF has now hatched a plan to burn all public buildings linked to voters register.
After this,l the Chinese will get green NRC as Chanda , Lungu, Kampyongo, Phiri, Mwila and then join the Police as Zambians.
Some fool will soon shout – “acts of a desperate opposition”. What did you buy the bloody fire fighters for? The Provincial Administration should be held responsible. Why should us the tax payers pay for fire tenders and also pay for the aftermath of a fire?
The stupid security guards were fast asleep from drinking Lutuku. Went to work drunk, hence they could not even workup despite the confusion fires cause. Investigate them. I think they know something they should tell the police.
I hope this department had started uploading all the data on the computer, otherwise it’s fixing the voters register again.
In Zambia we have jockeys. So this Katongo tells us that even the police next door did not see the fire or smoke to notify the fire brigade. The fire brigade is not far, why did it take from morning to 15:30 hrs. Where was the one million dollars fire engine? Shake.
Both the Police and Fire Brigade are within a walk able distance, after spending $42m on useless second hand wheel barrows all people can get is this nonsense?
The officers must have been drunk. It’s festive season.
Sorry, I meant ‘shame’
#sir Boston, thanks. Like father like son. This is our Zambia. In other countries, Christmas season is a season when the police and the fire brigade are on high alert. But in Zambia, the police are only on high alert when it comes to oppressing the opposition.
Where was the $1,000,000.00 Fire Tender?
For a million dollars ? each, our fire ? engines should be able to detect a fire emergency, and institute appropriate measures to avert loss of life or property.
No it won’t you need to ring them about fire if nobody did there is no way they would know
Where was the expensive fire engine sure. On this one you have failed us teribly.
I hope this teaches the Department of National Registration a lesson. In the age of the Internet, this dinosaur of a government department still uses typewriters and stores all the records manually in paper folders! Have these guys ever heard of Cloud storage? If all the records were digitized and stored in some cyberspace – based stystem, the fire wouldn’t have done as much harm as it now has.
Bwana PS you’re wrong in blaming the security officers. The security officers aren’t fire detectors. We expect such facilities to have installed fire detectors to alarm occurrence of fire. Even yourself you couldn’t have detected such kind of fire by the use of your senses of smell and sight. Because of limited supply of oxygen inside the building, such fires begin by smouldering, and by the time you can smell or see the smoke/flames, the colossal damage has been done.
Take heart beans PS analyse the situation before drawing an inference. Blaming officers who are deficient of senses of smell due to poverty will not help you.
I trust you digitalized the data.
Electronic cards a must before 2021 elections no need to waste money on votes cards.
Abena Ng’umbo-Luapula boy You too are wrong it’s the security officer duty to be patrolling giving each other turn, not sleeping.
@Chikunda Feira. Can you give me any technical rationale against which you considered me wrong?
Security officers patrols are outside the building and not inside. They man the gates and surrounding. How do you expect them to detect smouldering fire from the inside? If the building had fire detector installations, the alarm to security officers would be immediate. Moreover, the nature of materials at such facilities are fire hazards. Any delay in detection lead to severe damage. I’m technically surprised that they depend on security officers to detect the fire.
Because the new fire tenders went to welcome a football club that won a football trophy. I said it over Nkana heroes’ welcome.
Iam a Ndola product from Hillcrest. So there go my NRC records. Now I’m just like Mumba Yachi