The heavy rainfall Lusaka is receiving has continued to expose poor drainage systems in communities around the city.

Houses in several townships in Lusaka were yesterday flooded due to the heavy rains that pounded the city for over four hours.

The downpour, which started around 08:00 hours, prompted house occupants and their pets to temporarily abandon their flooded homes.

In Garden compound flooding due to inadequate drains is hampering smooth operations of some businesses. Traders and residents are appealing for authorities to intervene through construction of drainages.

Meanwhile, the body of a 40 year old man of Lusaka’s Garden overspill suspected to have drowned in Ngwerere stream on Saturday is yet to be found.

Gershom Mwape’s family has continued with the search since Saturday but so far all has been in vain.

A Muvi TV news crew found the family searching for the body of their missing relative in Ngwerere stream.

Patricia Mwape says Mr. Mwape went missing on Saturday February 10th, 2018.

Several houses in Luangwa Extension and New Kawama in Kabwe, Central province, have been flooded following heavy rains.

Central Province Permanent Secretary, Chanda Kabwe has visited the affected areas and he is not pleased with what he has seen.

Mr. Kabwe is particularly not happy that the contractor working on township roads in Bwacha and Luangwa townships, has paid a blind eye to the drainage system.

The visibly annoyed Permanent Secretary has taken to task the contractor, Ashford Roads Zambia and the consultant, for the poor workmanship on the drainage, which has triggered flash flooding in some areas.

Mr. Kabwe has further directed the contractor, the consultant, Kabwe Municipal Council and Kabwe District Administration to address the situation.

He said it is more important to serve the lives of the people, adding that government will not allow children to stay out of school, because of flash floods caused by poor workmanship.

Mr. Kabwe has since urged the consulting engineers and the contractor to provide an alternative drainage system to harness the situation.

Kitwe District Commissioner Binwell Mpundu says there is urgent need to address the way residents and Foreigners are taking up land illegally in the city.

Mr. Mpundu says most residents are occupying land illegally while foreigners are also acquiring huge chunks of land without following procedure.

He says the land opposite the Chingola road cemetery has been taken over by squatters because the developer has allegedly failed to develop the land.

He was speaking in Kitwe during the official opening of a stakeholders meeting to develop an advocacy strategy on responsible land investment in Zambia.

And the democratic governance and Human rights advocate -DEGHA- has called on stakeholders and the general citizenry to take an interest in issues of land management and distribution.

DEGHA National Coordinator Gerald Mutelo said Zambians must demand for responsible land investments in the country to protect the country.

Government has deferred the enforcement of the statutory instrument on the fitting of seat belts in mini buses from 2019 to 2022.

Minister of Transport and Communications Brian Mushimba says the adjustment of the enforcement of the SI has encountered many obstacles yet to be resolved with transporters.

Mr. Mushimba says discussions around the regulation have been slow.

He told journalists in an interview that government wants to enforce the regulation to protect passengers and reduce road fatalities.

Mr. Mushimba explained that most of the buses are not fitted with seat belts as they are originally manufactured as cargo vans.

MultiChoice’s GOtv unit in Zambia has restored free-to-air channels on its platform, after Zambia’s state broadcaster illegally cut the signals of these TV stations 15 months ago.

In December, GOtv dropped charges against the Zambia National Broadcasting Corp (ZNBC), China’s TopStar Communications and the Zambian government.

This was after free-to-air channels, which GOtv had carried since its inception in 2011, were blocked from the platform without warning in December 2016, according to MultiChoice, which also operates a satellite TV service in Zambia.

Digital terrestrial television service GOtv, a partnership between MultiChoice and the ZNBC, last year made an urgent high court application to prevent the ZNBC and TopStar from interfering with its signal.

However, it abandoned the legal route in December. Instead, it negotiated individual contracts with free-to-air channel providers to restore these signals for its customers, say people familiar with the matter. GOtv now broadcasts eight free-to-air channels.

MultiChoice’s relations with the state broadcaster soured after the ZNBC partnered with China’s StarTimes to launch digital TV company TopStar, which has been tasked with driving the country’s migration from analogue to digital broadcasting.

The TopStar joint venture is 60% owned by StarTimes — a structure which gives StarTimes majority control over Zambia’s digital television services and de facto control over the public broadcaster, analysts say.

The joint venture was accompanied by a loan of more than US$200m from the Export-Import Bank of China for investments in the digital broadcasting network and other infrastructure.

The loan has come under scrutiny from opposition parties and the former head of the ZNBC, who has argued that it is not commercially viable and costs have been inflated.
The loan agreement stipulates that TopStar will collect all ZNBC advertising revenues and tower rental fees for 25 years.

Zambian media say the ZNBC has since struggled to pay salaries and other operating costs.

The Zambia Business Times reported last year that former ZNBC director-general Chibamba Kanyama said the TopStar entity would drain the ZNBC of income.

“Having been part of this process and made the initial negotiation with StarTimes in China, I know [the deal is] a rip-off.”

Kanyama said initial loan negotiations were abandoned in 2013, when it was agreed that the digital migration process should cost less than $100m.

Independent TV critic Thinus Ferreira says the TopStar joint venture gives China’s StarTimes de facto control over the state broadcaster, which means there will be “undue influence” over broadcasting and digital migration.

The move to cut free-to-air channels to licensed broadcasters is illegal, he says. Further, the loan from the Chinese government gives the communist state influence over Zambia’s public sector.

Ferreira says StarTimes has been “very aggressive” with its expansion strategy in Africa, where it competes primarily with MultiChoice for market share using a number of different tactics.

Though it is not known if StarTimes was responsible, Ferreira says MultiChoice recently had its spectrum unexpectedly retracted in two towns, meaning the pay-TV provider had to scramble to restore services.

Media Monitoring Africa director William Bird says Africa’s shift to digital broadcasting is in many cases “being determined not by public interests but by commercial interests”. The de facto privatisation of Zambia’s national broadcaster is “extraordinary and shocking,” he says.

“Selling off your public broadcaster has fantastically long-term negative implications. New Zealand effectively privatised its public broadcaster and for the past 10 years has been desperately trying to claim back a sense of what a public broadcaster should be.”

Zambia’s switch to digital broadcasting began in October last year. Some towns will have both analogue and digital signals until the end of this month.

GOtv Zambia is also converting signals. So far, the company has converted 11 analogue broadcast sites across the country.

The ZNBC and Zambia’s communication department did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, SA’s migration from analogue to digital broadcasting has been painfully slow. In its home market, MultiChoice has been accused of having improper dealings with the SABC and formerly Gupta-owned ANN7.

Financial Mail

ZEMA has charged Silverest Garden Housing in Chongwe and two of its employees, Hu Xinqiuo and Tan Futian for contravening the Environmental Management Act No. 12 of 2011 (EMA) and its subsidiary legislation.

The Company and the two employees have been charged for unlawful discharge of a pollutant into the environment and failure to comply with an environmental order issued by ZEMA relating to discharge of effluent.

The two employees who had been detained at Chelston Police in Lusaka will appear in Court soon.

ZEMA Spokesperson Ireen Chipilu said the agency remains committed to ensuring that all approved projects operate within the provisions of the environmental law and any other relevant laws.

The Zambia Union of Journalist has welcomed the appointment of Dora Siliya as the new Information and Broadcasting Services Minister.

Zambia Union of Journalists Vice President Alex Basopo Njovu said ZUJ feels the appointment of Ms Siliya, who will double as Chief Government spokesperson is fitting because she is familiar with the workings, and indeed challenges, of the media in the country.

“We are confident Ms Siliya will use her experience in the media to help deal with the challenges facing public media like Times of Zambia, Zambia Daily Mail and Zambia National Broadcasting Services (ZNBC) which have been dogged with numerous operational challenges for some time,” Mr Njovu said.

“As is public knowledge, institutions like the Times of Zambia are in urgent need of recapitalisation as evidenced by the salary arrears which are running into seven months.”

Mr Njovu said it is the hope of ZUJ that the new Information minister will quickly hit the ground running by personally engaging all the relevant stakeholders in finding solutions to the problems facing public media.

“As her first task, we would like to see Ms Siliya visiting the Times of Zambia to personally appreciate and get first- hand information on the problems facing the company,” Mr Njovu said.

“We are alive to the fact that a wrong impression has been created by Ms Siliya’s predecessor Ms Mulenga who told Sun Fm in Ndola that Times of Zambia employees were being paid twice a month. This is far from the truth. ZUJ remains ready to meet Ms Siliya anytime. It is also our hope that her office will work hard to find solutions to problems facing workers at the Zambia Printing Company, where workers are barely making ends meet,” he said.