Zambia: Labor Day charges of opposition worker purge

By Francis Maingaila

LUSAKA, Zambia (AA) - A major Zambian trade union Monday accused the government of purging workers who sympathize with the opposition, also demanding that the public workers’ union stop dismissing opposition civil servants.

Chishimba Nkole, head of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), told President Edgar Lungu at a Labor Day Cerebration in the capital Lusaka that it is harassment for the government to dismiss workers on suspicion that they supported the opposition in last August’s disputed election.

“Zambia is a multiparty democracy and workers should not be victimized for supporting rival parties. The ZCTU therefore demand that workers dismissed or retired in the national interest be reinstated without condition,” he said.

But Lungu replied that the government will study the circumstances in which the workers were dismissed.

Denying that some workers were dismissed for supporting opposition parties in the last election, Lungu added that civil servants are bound by the law.

“Every public service worker is supposed to follow the set procedures that guide the public service, and failure to do so will catch up with them,” he said.

According to ZCTU reports, hundreds of workers that supported opposition parties in the last election are being purged from the civil service.