A sit-in protest slated for Monday 8th, July, 2013 is looming at the Times of Zambia to pressure government to help the state owned public media settle the three months non- payment of salaries.

The unionised workers at Times of Zambia have not been paid their monthly salaries for three months from April to June 2013.

The decision to stage a sit-in-protest follows a meeting held in Ndola where management and unionised members resolved to take the action next week.

The members unanimously resolved to take a go-slow with the view to seek government intervention in their plight adding that some of the workers have since been evicted from their houses due to non-payment of house rentals and also non-payment of utility bills such as water, electricity and even school fees for their school going children.

This is contained in a press statement signed by Zambia Union of Journalists (ZUJ) made available to ZANIS in Lusaka today.

The statement further states that the members resolved that the situation has continued to drag on for some time now and they feel withdrawing their labour would be the best answer to addressing the problem.

“Chapel executive committee officials explained the outcome of the meeting but the unionised members felt that things were not improving at Times of Zambia despite assurances from government and management.

“We unionised workers at the company have unanimously resolved to stage a sit-in protest on July 8th, 2013 to pressure government to address the situation because we have gone without being paid our monthly salaries for three months now,” the statement reads in part.

The unionised members however, have pledged to stand by the Union leadership as the only way to ensure that the firm is prevented from total collapse.

ZANIS

PARLIAMENT yesterday heard that the standards of university education in Zambia have tremendously deteriorated and is the cause of the general poor quality of graduates in all fields including law.

Chairperson of the committee on legal affairs, governance, human rights and gender matters, Jack Mwiimbu said the unfortunate position had been compounded by the liberalisation of university education which had seen the mushrooming of private universities countrywide.

Mr Mwiimbu who is United Party for National Development (UPND) Monze Member of Parliament (MP) said this when he moved a motion for Parliament to adopt the committee’s report that none of the country’s universities were ranked among the best in Africa.

He said the committee was concerned with the lack of supervision of all universities by the ministry of Education.

“Sir it is not unusual in this country to find a university operating in the backyard of some residential house or renting two rooms in some dilapidated building in town. Furthermore, the qualifications of lecturers in some of these universities are highly doubtful,” he said.

Mr Mwiimbu said the committee studied operations of the Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (ZIALE) and the administration of the legal practitioners qualifying examinations because of several reports to the effect that the pass rate at ZIALE in successive years had been going down.

He said according to the findings, the pass rate at ZIALE had been deteriorating progressively from about 2008 because of the increase in the number of students enrolling and general poor quality of graduates coming from some private universities who were failing to adopt with ZIALE conditions.

He said statistics at ZIALE indicated that students from the University of Zambia (UNZA) performed better than their colleagues from private universities because UNZA had no direct enrolment into law school but one had to successfully complete one year in the School of Humanities before enrolling.

He appealed to private universities offering the law degree to consider introducing stringent measures in their selection process for aspiring law students failure to which they risked their students to perpetually be failing at ZIALE.

He called on government through the ministry of Education to enhance its supervisory role over all universities.

Mr Mwiimbu urged government to consider offering loans to students to enable them access education at ZIALE adding that some students were not concentrating fully because of lack of sponsorship.

In supporting the report MMD Lukulu East MP Christopher Kalila said it was not right that Government should make the introduction of higher education free for all where a group of individuals decided to come together and form a university.

He said the universities were mushrooming because Government had no stringent measures on the regulation of the ownership of the said bodies.

MMD Nalikwanda MP Geoffrey Lungwangwa said Government should ensure that all universities had libraries adding that a number of universities were not fit to be highest schools of learning.

He was happy that ZIALE was playing the role of a gatekeeper and that Government should ensure that all professions should have gatekeepers provide checks and balances.

ZICTA has instituted criminal proceedings against at all the three mobile phone service providers namely Airtel, MTN Zambia and ZAMTEL for failure to meet minimum standards of quality of service.

ZICTA has resolved to take remedial measures relating to enforcement of quality of service in order to protect public interest in pursuant of the information and Communication Technologies Act No. 15 of 2009.

The deteriorating levels of Quality of Service has made communication difficult and resulted in increased public outcry and negative impact on ease of doing business in Zambia.

Under the published Quality of Service Guidelines, ZICTA has an option to invoke either administrative or criminal sanctions arising from the failure to adhere to the set parameters relating to quality of service.

In line with the foregoing, the Board of the Authority, on June 27, 2013 authorized Management’s decision to prosecute all the three mobile service providers for offering poor quality of service to the public.

The Authority, on July 4, 2013, instituted criminal proceedings against the mobile service providers on two counts of failure to meet minimum standards of quantity of service as specified and published by the Authority contrary to Section 67 of the ICT Act and one count of failure to comply with a provision of the Quality of Service Guidelines issued by the Authority contrary to Section 79(1) of the ICT Act respectively.

This is according to a statement issued by ZICTA Public Relations Manager Ngabo Nankonde.