A named Bar in Lusaka’s Chawama compounded is allegedly operating as a brothel. This is according to some concerned residents who spoke on condition of anonymity. They told ZANIS in Lusaka today that Katete Bar situated near KUKU market, has been turned into a brothel by the owner who has allegedly engaged some foreign women as sex workers.

They alleged that the Bar owner has entered into an agreement with some Zimbabwean women working as sex workers at the bar.
They said the Zimbabwean women are charging between K10, 000 and K50, 000 for each sexual encounter and are mainly targeting those who patronize the bar and some residents in the area.

The residents have since called on the Lusaka City Council and the area councilor to quickly move in and stop the act before it gets out of hand. They said they are worried because the continued operation of the business poses a danger of high risk of disease transition in the area.

“The council and other relevant bodies should come in and close this business because we are at risk of contracting diseases, it is also inconveniencing because the women will even approach you when you go for drinking,” one of the residents said.

And when contacted, Lusaka City Council (LCC) Public Relation Manager, Chanda Makanta said the council is not aware of the situation but admitted that there have been complaints from residents around the city on the mushrooming of brothels.

Mrs. Makanta has meanwhile described the incident as most unfortunate especially that foreigners are involved.

She said the business is an act of public nuisance and a crime according to the Zambian law adding that the council will involve the police and others to investigate the matter thoroughly.

She said the council had previously done investigations after similar reports and some business premises had been closed and some have taken to court.

Mrs. Makanta has also called on the immigrations department to also investigate the matter especially that it borders on foreigners who could have been cleared by the department.

She has further called on the public to continue tipping the council with vital information in order for authority to effectively act.

ZANIS

Chief Government Spokesperson Lieutenant Ronnie Shikapwahsa has described as wild and unfounded, assertions by former State House Special Assistant for Policy Implementation and Monitoring Jack Kalala that chiefs from Eastern province directed President Rupiah Banda to purge the late President Mwanawasa’s tribesmen from Government.

Lt. Gen. Shikapwasha told ZANIS in an interview in Lusaka today that statements by Mr. Kalala were not true because the late President Levy Mwanawasa had a wonderful relationship with the chiefs in Eastern Province.

Lt. Gen. Shikapwasha, who is also Information and Broadcasting Services Minister, says allegations by Mr. Kalala were strange because President Banda, Vice President George Kunda and the entire cabinet worked well with the late president.

The Minister observed that Zambia as united and peaceful country did not deserve to have leaders such as Mr. Kalala, who makes statements to deceive the nation.

Lt. Gen Shikapwasha stressed that Mr. Kalala failed to contribute to the development of the country when he had an opportunity to do so adding that this is why he had resorted to making such statements.

Meanwhile Lt. Gen. Shikapwasha has urged Change Life Zambia Executive Director, Father Frank Bwalya to honor the people in authority as they are chosen by God.

Lt. Gen. Shikapwasha said it was important for Fr. Bwalya, as a clergyman, to recognize that the government which is in place has been chosen by God.

He said contrary to Fr. Bwalya’s observations, the MMD Government under the leadership of President Banda has gone ahead to provide quality leadership in the country.

Lt. Gen Shikapwasha noted that a lot of developmental progarmmes have been initiated and were progressing well while the performance of the economy has improved.

The Minister wondered why Fr. Bwalya has continued making statements against President Banda out of hatred.
He advised the Catholic Priest to show love to all the people regardless of their political affiliations.

ZANIS

Last week we reported to you that our server was experiencing high latency and that our technicians were working hard to correct the problem which they had managed to identify. We are happy to report that the problem was fully resolved on Saturday afternoon and the performance of the site has significantly improved. We just want to take this opportunity address a few issues.

What Happened

Lusakatimes.com gets its income purely from advertising and that is what makes it possible for us to provide content in a quality fashion for free. The people who place adverts on our site demand some statistical information concerning the performance of their adverts and we have had the software that collects these statistics and sends them out on a weekly basis to our advertisers. It is this software that almost brought our site to its knees. In fact this software has been a problem for a while now. Not only did it slow down the site, but it also used to frequently crash the backend engine, resulting in a display of a white blank page with the message “502 Bad Gateway”. The only way we could resolve this was to restart the server backend. We tolerated this software for this long because of budget constraints and no viable alternatives on the open source market.

We are glad to report that we managed to acquire a new separate server that manages all the administrative side of adverts. The new arrangement has been working well since Saturday and we believe the occurrence of the dreaded “502 Bad Gateway” has been significantly reduced.The error used to occur several times in a day.

We thank all the experts for their suggestions on Javascript( The software files that adds a lot of nice features to the site). We took note of your advise and enabled the technique that allows us to compress content, by a factor of 80%, then transferring it onto the wire before exploding it or uncompressing it into your web browser. So, despite the large content that we pack into a single page, we are able to deliver this to your browser at a faster speed now. This process is technically called GZIP Compression.

Unfortunately, if you are still using Internet Explorer 6.x (IE6), our website will still be slow to you. IE6 does not support GZIP compression. We believe your browsing is slow everywhere you go, anyway because GZIP compression is enabled on most serious websites you can think of out there. Please upgrade your browser. Browsers are free and there is no need to hold on to an antiquity that has survived from the distant past-IE6.

New Features

The developers of the toolbar have added the CDN feature (Content Delivery Network) that makes the toolbar load faster. As a results we have enabled a couple of new features on the toolbar like chat and how many people are online. For the Chat, you can use your twitter or facebook account to logint and just login anonmously, lusakatimes style.

Expect in our next LT Update more information on how to use most of the features on the toolbar. We really want to enhance your blogging (or is it Mirco Blogging as the experts now tell us?). Undoubtedly, most of the content on LT can be obtained from elsewhere, but we want your experience when you come to blog or micro blog on LT to be a unique, live and memorable one. Media houses put out content to drive their various agendas, and probably us included, but the opinion that you bring to the site is special and belongs to you as your brain child. In fact it cannot be bought, especially if you have even the option of delivering it anonymously. You can tell it as it is. At LT we highly value that and we shall continue to work hard to integrate the best technologies out there to make sure that you have a cutting edge platform at your finger tips to add your voice to the issues affecting our wonderful country.

Mobile Phones

This is undoubtedly a fast growing market and from as early as two years ago we have been trying to cater for this segment. Unfortunately we are still struggling. The technology out there is still pitiful when it comes to delivering content to an average cellphone. At the moment you can barely just read the stories, but posting comments is really problematic. We are still search for the solution.

Having said the above, we can happily announce that the iphone/ipod-touch works very well on the site. You will get a customised view of the LT and the comments posting works like a charm. Please give it a shot and give us feedback. The comments are not numbered though and there are no flags. We are working on that.

Comments Policy

As the cliché goes: last, but not the least-Comments.This vexing issue affects us all. We have this word we never saw in primary school-ad hominem, in our comments policy. It can have a myriad of meanings to a lot of people, but this is what it means to us:-attacking an opponent’s character rather than answering his argument. Can we please do this on the site. Can we also apply this to our leaders? We believe people comment because they want to be heard and influence decisions and surely if you want somebody to hear you and later on take your advise, you better be nice to them. If you want honey, don’t disturb the bees. Lets make this forum a place where we educate each other and deliver our opinions to our leaders in a civilised manner. Yes some of us are very dedicated and passionate indeed about what we believe in, but let us respect other people’s views and just attack each other’s argument.

Have a wonderful day

LT team

MORE people have condemned the Press Association of Zambia (PAZA) for receiving money from the Press Freedom Committee of The Post Newspapers, saying the association had compromised itself at the expense of providing impartial leadership to institutions it represents.

MMD spokesperson Mike Mulongoti said that the PAZA leadership should be ashamed to be receiving money from one media institution. Mr Mulongoti said there was no justification for them to receive money from the Press Freedom Committee of the Post, an organisation linked to The Post Newspapers because even if they claimed to be a non-governmental organisation, there was no way they could receive money from anywhere.

He said the MMD would wait for a comprehensive statement from PAZA because there was no way leaders could be receiving money from selected media institutions.

He also challenged the PAZA leadership to call for the annual general meeting because it was illegal and against their constitution for them to be in office for about four years without elections. Forum for Leadership Search (FLS) has advised PAZA not to be compromised by The Post at the expense of providing impartial leadership to the institutions it represents.[quote]

FLS executive director Edwin Lifwekelo said in a statement yesterday that allegations by the Committee of Citizens that some media institutions were on The Post Newspaper pay-roll had a chilling effect on the integrity of media institutions and investigations should be instituted.

“The forum prays that the allegations that PAZA leadership were on The Post Newspaper payroll are not true because they have a serious bearing on the integrity of the PAZA leadership and other media institutions,” he said. Mr Lifwekelo urged the PAZA leadership to renew its mandate if it was true they did not have legitimacy from their membership as alleged by Committee of Citizens executive director Gregory Chifire.

He said it was only fair that the PAZA membership gave the leadership an opportunity to renew its mandate.
He said the FLS appreciated the dialogue between the Government and media institutions and hoped that all stakeholders treated the issue with urgency.

He said an enforceable definition of what constitutes legitimate news publication be applied as it would place values that would stress the importance of public service, impartial reporting and balance of opinion.

The forum also condemned the unproductive attacks on Vice-President George Kunda because they did not add value to the spirit of dialogue in Zambia since he was being unfairly targeted for political expediency.

PAZA vice-president Amos Chanda said those alleging that the PAZA leadership was receiving money should provide evidence for the police to move in. Mr Chanda said PAZA had only signed a memorandum of understanding with the Press Freedom Committee of The Post Newspapers based on mutual co-operation on media and freedom of expression.

[Times of Zambia]

Patriotic Front President Michael Sata has said that as far as he is concerned. President Rupiah Banda is still a member of United National Indepencdece Party (UNIP). Mr Michael Sata said that the First Republican President Kenneth Kaunda’s support for President Rupiah Banda shows that he is still regarded as a UNIP member.

Mr Sata also noted that Dr. Kaunda has seen that the UNIP current president, his Son Tilenji Kaunda, is too weak to handle politics and that is why he is clinging on to Mr. Rupiah Banda.

Mr. Sata further said that Mr. Banda has never made his resignation from the UNIP public, and that as far as he was concerned, President Banda is a UNIP member.

He said that it is not surprising that the Dr Kaunda and R Banda even went to Luanshya on a Presidential assignment together saying that their friendship is political.

Mr. Sata wondered what purpose the presence of Dr Kaunda in Luanshya was going to serve.

He said that Mr. Banda has gone to the MMD to destroy the party because as far as he is concerned he is still a UNIP member.

Mr. Sata saod that the only true member of the MMD is the Acting party spokesperson Mike Mulongoti.

He said that there are a few people in the ruling party who are genuine members, adding that the MMD is headed for extinction.

[QFM News Zambia]