Minister of Information and Media Chushi Kasanda is concerned with the low salaries and poor working conditions journalists in some media houses are subjected to.
Ms. Kasanda who has described the situation as disheartening, says it is unacceptable that some institutions can be paying their journalists as low as K900 per month.
She said this cannot be allowed to continue and has since called for a meeting with media owners to establish what the problem is.
Ms. Kasanda said like other professionals journalists play a very important role in society and must be given the respect and dignity they deserve.
The Minister was speaking when the Zambia Media Women Association (ZAMWA) paid a courtesy call on her today.
She said her Ministry will ensure that a conducive environment is created for journalists to professionally do their job.
“As a ministry we are concerned about low salaries some media houses are paying their journalists. I have since instructed that a meeting be arranged with media owners so that we can find a solution to this problem,” she said.
Meanwhile, Zambia Media Women Association (ZAMWA) chairperson Caroline Kalombwe said the poor conditions of service for journalists are worrying.
Ms. Kalombe said if not addressed the situation has potential to compromise the quality of information members of the public are given.
She appealed to the Ministry of Information and Media to take keen interest in the discussions around the proposal for a sector minimum wage for journalists.
“As the saying goes, a hungry journalist is a danger to society and that’s why we want your ministry to seriously take interest in this matter,” she said.
She said her organization is optimistic that once put in place, the proposed media self-regulatory mechanism, will deal with most of the challenges such as wages.
Meanwhile, Ms. Kalombe has urged Government to give chance to women to lead public media institutions.
She said all public media institution have women with requisite qualifications and experience for appointment to top positions.
“Times of Zambia, Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, Zambia News and Information Services and the Zambia Daily Mail all have women who can provide leadership and stir these organisations to higher heights,” Ms. Kalombe said.
The meeting with ZAMWA is among many that Ms. Kasanda has lined up in her continued engagements with media stakeholders.
This is according to a statement issued by Ministry of Information and Media Public and Media Relations Unit.
Salaries are tied to among many things to the profit a company makes.
Go for nursing school, English for nothing.
K900 per month, do they work for LT or ZWD?
You said a child to university and end up working for Mwebantu and Tumfweko.
There are a lot of factors affecting conditions of services for journalists, social media has also diluted the importance of this sector to some extent.
How much do this media houses make as profit. Most of the media houses are far from being professional but simply rumor mongers.
This is a matter for ministry of labour, not her. And her solution is to call the owners of the media companies, and do what with them exactly?
This woman needs advisors right next to her whenever she is making public statements, otherwise she will continue saying none issues.
She is part of the problem solving unit. Journalists fall under her ministry and if anything she’s the right person to speak for them and liase with the ministry of labour on monetary matters.
Journalism is not a profession,…….. We are all journalists as long as we have smart phones. There is no need to go to a college. So these guys must do some other things apart from gathering news.( Bamutenga nkani).
@ Jr Ngumbu I agree totally. It beats me how this woman ended up at Ministry of Information. Clueless to say the least!
Poor Minister does not know what to do…
Media houses are businesses and their ability to pay good salaries depends on how well they’re doing financially. It’s not the Minister’s job to interfere or intervene in that. Journalists hv labour unions that represent their interests.
1. Sadly, this Minister, her heart is not in this job, and she is not astute about her role. She probably has strength that can be used somewhere else. HH should have given this job to Cornelius Mweetwa than insult him with a junior job.
Where has this Minister she been? The world has changed. People don’t buy so much printed news like in the old days’ when media companies got their most revenues from sales prints and advertisements. We are in the digital world; free news is online at the speed of light.
2. In UK, the once powerful newspapers such as The Guardian and many others are constantly asking for online donations to keep them afloat.
Even media houses asking for online monthly subscription, still find it hard to raise revenue from subscriptions. The most distributed print newspaper in London {The Evening Standard}, which prints out 1.3m copies per day is now free as the owners make money from advertisers. This paper used to sell like hot cakes at one time. To please advertisers, The Evening Standard was delivering free news from door in certain areas of London during the lockdown.
Madam! encourage media houses to become creative and innovative. Don’t give them false hope. I have a friend who runs a media entity in Zambia. He makes no profit but does it because journalism…
Sorry but in a free market economy, you don’t get to dictate how much a company or a business pays its workers. Yes the government can set a minimum wage, and as long as a business is not violating the minimum wage requirement, they’re free to pay whatever they want. It’s a take it or leave it kind of situation. If a journalist doesn’t like the low wages being given, move to another media house, or change careers. Forcing businesses to pay more money to their workers, when they may struggling themselves, can lead to businesses going belly up. When that happens, everybody loses.
But kwena this minister awe mwe; The whole minister soliciting for better salaries for journalists – didn’t she cross something here? Isn’t this the job of Unions? Esp also that these journalists never covered HH was he was in opposition- so better salaries for who and to report what? Look at the reporting of Lusaka times for example – always in the negative. She must not dare use government money for such an exercise.
And I can’t guarantee that this is one ministry that is redundant and any timely changes will happen here- no doubt. Cos she is always out of sink with reality. Another one is the tourism minister, these two don’t seem to be knowing what they are doing on their jobs. By the way iam Tonga from Mazabuka and both ministers I notice are Bantu Botatwe also but whoever you are, we want delivery. It’s New Dawn. Come on!
Look at Jack Mwimbu for example, Local Government, Minister of Mines and my favorite working machine is Minister of Transport (Frank Tayali) New Dawn Bulldozer. He makes people work where he goes – very reflective of HH work ethic.
@The vulture. Journalists don’t fall under a minister or govt ministry. Their democratic duty is to be a watchdog so that govt can be exposed when it does wrong so how can you expose someone supervising you?
If anything in a democracy such a ministry is irrelevant. And such misunderstandings by citizens are what leads to dictatorships. When you are ready or willing to be enslaved a slave master will show up.
There is nothing strange or unusual the minister has said or done, she is a leader and must difficult questions, who knows there are some media houses doing well and short changing their journalists in terms of salaries, and being a leader entails being cross functional in thinking, you cant say this is a labour issue only, the bloggers here on this issue are a mixture of media owners who don’t want to pay and the usual ignorant others specialized in typing especially those from the rejected ubomba mwibala alya mwibala regime.
The minister is okay, the clueless are as usual doing what they are paid to do on this blog
Minimum wage policy please
UPND Cadre from Ngombe Compound Lsk @30
For your Answer. She did not need to have collateral to borrow. It was a Buy-To-Rent Property Investment . Do your research you will discover that its very easy to buy property even if you don’t have money or collateral from any bank in the world. All that she did was to borrow and go in agreement the bank who would partly own the plot until fully paid. In this case it was land together with the house which was already there.