Mpelembe Drilling employees accuse Musokotwane, others of damaging Rupiah's image

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Mpelembe Drilling employees accuse Musokotwane, others of damaging Rupiah's image

Mpelembe Drilling employees accuse Musokotwane, others of damaging Rupiah's image
By Mwila Chansa-Ntambi
Wed 27 July 2011, 13:59 CAT

SOME Mpelembe Drilling employees have accused the ministerial and technical committee constituted to look into the issue of terminal benefits for the company’s former employees of ‘campaigning against’ President Rupiah Banda.

The employees and concerned citizens, led by Mineworkers Union of Zambia (MUZ) Mpelembe Drilling branch chairperson Geoffrey Lishika, told The Post in a walk-in interview in Kitwe that the ministerial and technical committee was playing double standards.

About K19.5 billion is owed to the ex-workers in unpaid terminal benefits.

“We raised a petition to President Rupiah Banda over terminal benefits for Mpelembe Drilling employees who have not been paid their terminal benefits. About 1,800 employees are affected. This includes those who stopped work in December 2009 and those whose terminal benefits were not paid after privatisation,” Lishika explained.

“President Banda replied and told us that he would constitute a team of permanent secretaries and ministers to look into this issue. The team was constituted in December 2010 and from the technical side, Mr Evans Chibiliti was chairman while Mr Situmbeko Musokotwane was chair on the ministerial side.”

Lishika said stakeholders felt that the team constituted was not working effectively because they had never done anything tangible from the time it was established.

“We travelled to Lusaka with my secretary and we were sleeping at InterCity Bus Terminus for over a month but nothing tangible came out. When you see this person, he tells you to see the next person just like that. Those people are playing games,” Lishika said.

He complained that when they went to State House, they were blocked by President Banda’s private secretary Eddie Mwanza.

And secretary of the pressure group, Daybin Siuluta charged that President Banda was surrounded by ‘a pack of wolves’.

“We just want him President Banda to call us so that we find the way forward on this issue. The people involved to solve this are too many and they’ve been telling us to be patient. But our patience has run out, and we have turned into patients,” Siuluta said.

He wondered who was going to benefit from the ‘unprecedented’ development that the government always boasted about if its people were suffering.

And MUZ Mpelembe Drilling branch secretary Chisha Indako urged President Banda to accommodate the union and the pressure group so that they could find a way forward for all interested parties on the issue of terminal benefits.

Labels: MPELEMBE DRILLING COMPANY, RUPIAH BANDA, SITUMBEKO MUSOKOTWANE