By Burnett Munthali

In a latest ruling by the Industrial Relations Court (IRC) on December 23rd, Deputy Chairperson Mike Kandulu mandated that State House must pay former President Lazarus Chakwera’s spokesperson Brian Banda K103,316,418 for unfair termination of employment.

Additionally, the Times Television presenter has been granted a severance allowance of K1,251,418.50.

First of all, in all fairness, I would like to congratulate Brian Banda for taking this matter to court and finally winning the case. I would have complained if Brian dropped this matter without fighting against the injustice because I knew this was wrong right from the beginning. However, the Times radio presenter went to court quietly without making any noise about it and it was as if there was nothing happening in the ground until just now because I never saw it anywhere in the media.

Secondly, I have liked how smart Brian has handled himself throughout this matter. He would have chosen to say something on times radio when Mwayi za ndebvu sorry, ndebvu za Mwayi, Wonder Msiska first welcomed him back from State House or even on his Facebook page but he didn’t. I remember, there were so many thought provoking questions which Wonder Msiska asked Brian to clarify but he smartly answered and dodged mentioning that he was going to take or had already taken legal action against State House. To that point, he has proven to be very smart indeed and there’s no doubt about that.

Thirdly, Brian Banda is courageous. He has just shown and demonstrated that courage by going to seek legal redress from the court. Many people would leave injustices done to them unresolved by not taking the matter anywhere. It takes only courageous people to wage a legal battle like this one and I see great courage in this man.

Fourthly, the radio and TV presenter is a journalist and not a lawyer but he knew that he was unfairly dismissed from his job so he went to court and sued the State House. That demonstrates to me he is knowledgeable about the labour laws of this country and his rights. People must know their employment service regulations anywhere they go to work if they don’t, they must ask around for legal opinion because only knowledge is power.

Finally, State House could have avoided all this embarrassment of firing Brian Banda at the time which has backfired today. The President should have saved these millions of Kwacha government is compensating Brian today for something else because he made himself a champion of rule of law in his Hi-5 but this is abuse of law by State House and not rule of law. Infact tax payers are going to pay double the price for this administrative error because while government is compensating Brian Banda for unlawful dismissal, there’s someone else who is being paid for the same job at State House in place of Brian Banda. This could have been avoided.

And again, The Attorney General must have failed his job of advising President Reverend Lazarus Chakwera of the legal implications on this matter. Probably, he simply avoided advising the President in order to save his job because he might have seen how Attorney General Silungwe, who had strictly advised the President got fired. Silungwe was a very strict Attorney General and could not bow down to lawlessness which he didn’t want to be part of.

On the other hand, if the Attorney General did his job, then President Reverend Lazarus Chakwera must have refused to listen to his legal advisor, the Attorney General, in the likeliness of losing this unlawful dismissal case. I think our president must be a very arrogant President who would like to disrespect the same laws which he ignorantly would like to defend.