PRESS STATEMENT: On Mr Tutwa Ngulube’s Threats Against News Diggers
The Free Press Initiative (FPI) Zambia is deeply concerned and saddened by manoeuvres being employed by lawyer Tutwa Ngulube, acting on behalf of his clients Honeybee Pharmacy and Human Rights Observers, to drag a state institution into his personal agenda against the News Diggers Newspapers.
We know that Mr Ngulube is legal counsel for Honeybee Pharmacy of Kamwala which has unresolved issues with the Zambian government over a contract worth $17 million for the supply of health kits to the Ministry of Health, most of which turned out to be defective, risking the lives of millions of our people. It is on this background that Mr Ngulube has now written NAPSA, a state institution, demanding details of the newspaper’s accounts at the Authority. Prior to this, Mr Ngulube wrote a letter to the newspaper demanding a retraction of the earlier story News Diggers wrote that brought out details of the questionable granting of the $17 million supply contract to Honeybee, a pharmacy in Kamwala.
In response to Mr Ngulube’s request, NAPSA has written a letter to News Diggers demanding documentation relating to its contributions prior to an inspection on the newspaper’s books of accounts. This is not a problem. There is nothing wrong with NAPSA writing any institution to demand details of their statutory contributions on behalf of the employees. And we think that the newspaper in this case would have no problems furnishing NAPSA with the requested details. But what we see as a problem is an individual here trying so hard to prove a point and maintain his relevance to Honeybee by abusing a state institution. If there was no wrongdoing on the part of Honeybee in the execution of the Health Kit supply contract, we expect the learned counsel to keep his cool until the current investigations instituted in the matter by the Anti-Corruption Commission are concluded.
We urge Mr Ngulube to allow state institutions to carry out their mandates without any interference or undue influence and further ask him to respect freedom of the press which we expect him to hold dear as a lawyer of many years of practice. His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zambia, Dr Edgar Chagwa Lungu, has on different fora openly spoken about the need for independent press and press freedom, and we expect Mr Ngulube to adhere to that, especially that he is a lawmaker who also holds a high position in Parliament as Deputy Chief Whip.
News Diggers Newspapers should be commended for their investigative journalism because without them, we would not have known about the defective medicines, gloves and condoms supplied to the government by Honeybee Pharmacy. It was because of the work which News Diggers did which led to Honeybee’s appearance before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, in which these issues were addressed.
What Mr Ngulube is individually doing is an attempt to curtail the freedom of the press and intimidate independent media houses, which FPI denounces in the strongest terms.
Issued by
Joan Chirwa
FPI -Founder
January 27, 2021