Ordered to stop
The High Court has issued an order stopping further restructuring at the state media institution.
Bob Chimkango, the lawyer representing employees at MBC and Malawi Television, says over 150 employees and the union demanded that the merger be nullified as it was flawed.
"The High Court order granted by the Blantyre court stops the MBC director general and all with that authority from implementing the merger," he said.
The authority that the order has been directed to include, Bright Malopa, the director general of the MBC, secretaries for information, education, youth and sports and tourism wildlife and culture.
The lawyer said one of the grounds include the right to fair labour practices where the applicants queried their redeployment to new positions that were lower than their previous positions. The employees argued on the court summons that this was unreasonable, torture, and degrading.
"...TVM is still a limited company and for it to stop its operations, it must be liquidated in accordance with the Companies Act. The director general, Bright Malopa cannot act as a liquidator because it is beyond his authority," Chimkango said.
The redeployed employees were forced to seek court injunction after finding themselves in a dilemma as the government ministries and departments they were deployed to, refused to take them in.
The Nation newspaper quoted sources at the department of human resources management at the ministries of agriculture and health arguing that Malopa redeployed MBC employees to these ministries on his own.
"[They] are said to have told the beleaguered former MBC staff that their chief executive officer, Bright Malopa, was not an employer in the civil service to be allocating staff to ministries and departments," the paper reported.
It is at the ministry of information alone where the redeployed employees were welcomed.
Secretary for Information and Civic Education, James Kalirangwe said the ex-MBC staff who reported at the ministry was made to sign necessary papers before being asked to take time off to look for housing as well as give the ministry authority to identify office space for them.
The government office which had been running the redeployment process has said the MBC management wringed in doing things beyond their jurisdiction. The Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) which was handling the matter said MBC management has blundered because it highjacked the process while they were working on acceptable modalities.
"The merger paper for MBC did not give powers to management to reallocate the staff...and the outcome contravened the Employment Act, including reduction in salaries failure to take into account the number of years one had served," the paper quoted unnamed OPC source.
The source from the president's office also pointed out that the Employment Act is clear about redeployment where no one can have their benefits reduced due to such process.
"The pension schemes for MBC and civil servants are different. They needed to close them first. All staff should have been sent to the Human Resource Department for proper allocation and that's not what happened," the OPC source said.
Chimkango said the MBC management also failed to consult the employees, arguing their redeployment borders on issues pertaining to the welfare of the employees.
In his ruling Justice Rowland Mbvundula has since urged the parties to adhere to the court order pending a judicial review.
Media institutions have not taken the MBC issue sitting down as is the tendency when things of this nature are happening in Malawi for fear of the 'proverbial Media War'. The Nation Publications Limited (NPL) has come out strong condemning the abuse the MBC employees are suffering.
In its editorial of The Nation on Wednesday 7 September 2011, the publication screamed with a headline that MBC employees need humane treatment.
"The tossing around of the redeployed former MBC employees exposes a very sad development in public service - the inhumane treatment of staff," reads the first paragraph of the editorial.
It then said considering the cycle that the unfortunate 300 plus former employees have gone through: from losing a job to being confronted with a much less-paying one and then finally being denied even that low-paying job, it is clear that there is lack of human face to the whole process.
"What makes it even worse is the fact that these events are coming after a lot of anxiety that the employees were subjected to following the announcement that there would be a merger and major retrenchments at the institution," said the editorial.
It then pleads with government to stop humiliating their staff, saying no employee should be subjected to such treatment, especially in these tough economic times.
In early 2010, government merely announced that the two institutions have merged and on 1 July 2010 President Bingu wa Mutharika appointed Malopa to become director general of the newly created MBC institution.
Malopa has been the acting head of the defunct TVM since 2007 after he was removed from the position of deputy director general at MBC.
A statement from the OPC, signed by its chief secretary Bright Msaka, signalled the appointment of Malopa without announcing the fate of other officers who were heading the two institutions before they merged.
From this time until to date employees at the two institutions have been working under heavy apprehension as they never realised what their fates will turn to be.
