Fri, 10 Nov 2017 09:25:51 +0000
By Sandra Machima
UGANDAN authors were secretly contracted to write Zambian textbooks produced under fictitious Zambian names by a Ugandan company that “surprisingly” won a US$5million text book contract that sidelined nearly all Zambian publishers.
Some of the Zambian conspirators allowed their names to be used at a fee of 20 percent of the sales proceeds.
Now one of the Ugandan authors has sued the publishing company for copyright infringement, the Daily Nation can reveal.
Margaret Kabanda has sued MK Publishers, for copyright infringement after the book she authored was credited to a “Shanzuwa Biggie” Zambian author.
She has taken MK to the Uganda High Court, but in its defence MK has submitted that the Ugandan authors were fully aware that the books they were writing would carry Zambian names as authors for commercial purposes.
One of the letters from MK Publishers’ lawyers reads in part, “ your client was approached together with other authors/teachers who collectively worked as a team to develop materials for the Zambia Education syllabus after our client obtained a tender for that purpose.
“This was a unique project, which had a specific market, and there is no way your client would have authored these materials prior knowledge of this fact, since the Zambian curriculum is far different from our curriculum.”
Under the scheme, the Ministry of Education gave the contract for the production of text books to MK Publishers, which according to PACRA records, is owned by two Ugandans and two Zambians, with the understanding that the work would be locally done.
However, it has emerged that the copyright for the text books does not belong to any Zambians as the work was written by Ugandans while Zambians’ names were used on the understanding that they would be paid royalties.
It is believed that Zambia was losing about US$20 million paid to foreign companies registered in Zambia at the expense of the local publishers.
The awarding of the bulk contract to MK Publishers had raised an outcry from local publishers who felt that the job would have been better handled by local authors and local publishers.
However, MK Publishers, from Uganda was awarded the bulk of books tendered amid controversy and in the process, most of the books that were distributed by the same publishing house in some schools were rejected on grounds that some of them had foreign concepts that could not be understood by both teachers and learners.
The Daily Nation also learnt that the Zambians that were used were allegedly paid two to three percent of sales as royalty for the use of their names as Zambian authors.
MK Publishers was among some companies that had been awarded big tenders by the Ministry of General Education, a situation that had generated debate among local publishers who felt they were being denied opportunities to boost the book industry in the country.
MK Publishers was awarded a contract worth over US$5 million to print school textbooks. This year following an uproar MKP has been sidelined in preference of Grey Matter, a Kenyan Zambian company believed to represent Longhorn Publishers of Kenya and were awarded $3.4m Government book procurement.
A number of local publishers that were sidelined by the procurement in the last few years had closed down, leading to loss of jobs in the local book industry.
The influx of foreign companies in the production of text books was a result of the Ministry centralising the procurement and distribution of textbooks to schools, a system that made the system susceptible to corruption.
Local publishers have demanded that the Ministry of Education reverts to the decentralisation way of purchasing teaching and learning materials for schools to strengthen the purchase and supply of textbooks to all public learning institutions.
