By ADRIAN MWANZA
ZAMBIA Airways chairman Bonaventure Mutale has said that the outbreak of Covid-19 has forced the corporation to scale down level of operations from three aircrafts to just two.
Mr Mutale said that they had initially planned for three planes, two Q400 planes to service the domestic route and a 737 to service the international routes.
‘’We are very ready for the December 1 take-off and we will commence with two planes but initially we were supposed to commence with three planes but due to the Covid-19 outbreak we were forced to slightly scale down the levels of operation by commencing with just two planes,’’ he said.
And on claims that the Chief Executive Officer was still mistreating workers, Mr Mutale said that they had set up a committee that tabled the matter and that the employees failed to substantiate their claims.
Mr Mutale said that there were some levels of ignorance by some employees on corporate governance and that there was need to educate them.
He said the CEO was advised and told to be acquainted with corporate governance in order to avoid such occurrences in the future.
Mr Mutale said there was a negative narrative about the partnership between IDC and Ethiopian Airways and most people did not understand the nitty gritties.
‘’There are a number of people that do not mean well and are trying to create a very wrong narrative about this partnership,’’ he said.
He said one such narrative was the appointment of the CEO which was rotational and that EA was the first to appoint the CEO and then after that a Zambian would take over.
Mr Mutale said that the law indicated that when there was an expatriate a Zambian was supposed to be in second position as part skills transfer scheme.
He said that the total contribution between IDC and EA was amounting to US$30 million and that IDC had pumped in K70 million.
IDC which is 55% majority shareholder translates to US$15.5 million while EA 45% translates to US$14.5 million and that US$ 5million would go towards infrastructure building of office space.
