Public service workers need constitutional protection – Mwanza

Public service workers need constitutional protection – Mwanza
By SANFROSSA MANYINDA
PUBLIC service workers are entitled to constitutional protection where their dismissal must be based on a just cause and due process in which they could be heard and defend themselves before they were dismissed, Center for Constitutionalism and Legal Justice (CONLEJ) has said.
CONLEJ Director Isaac Mwanza has said no public service worker deserves to be dismissed unfairly or based on tribe or political reasons.
Mr Mwanza therefore advised President Hichilema to must stop the reinstatement of civil servants based on tribal grounds.
He said the pronouncements by Mr Hichilema and his actions in the fight against tribalism, protection of the right to employment and against unfair dismissals did not match.
“President Hichilema, while seeming to believe in the right of all persons to employment and against unfair dismissals or dismissals based on political and tribal grounds has himself continued to make dismissals of public service workers which may amount to unfair, political or even tribal dismissals.
“The President should therefore stop accusing his predecessor when he is doing exactly the same things that he is condemning,” he said.
Mr Mwanza said a good number of public service workers dismissed by Mr Hichilema, among others Service Chiefs, Intelligence Chiefs, revenue and senior police officers, Secretaries to Cabinet, Treasury all had active contracts of public service.
He said the workers were dismissed without a just cause and due process required by Article 173(3) of the Constitution of Zambia.
Mr Mwanza said the head of state appeared to believe and had made the nation believe that some civil servants hailing from certain tribes were dismissed from Government based on tribe.
He said these were the civil servants his administration seek to reinstate using a secretive process conducted in a boardroom using the very people and institutions who had a hand in dismissing them.
He added that the reinstatements, using a secretive process and compromising institutions that dismissed them, were a recipe for promoting tribal hegemony and a sense of tribal superiority among public service workers.
He said workers who believed were unfairly dismissed or based on tribal and political reasons had a right to legal recourse through a competent court of law.