BY ADRIAN MWANZA –
ABOUT 1, 000 former Zambia State Insurance Corporation (ZSIC) employees have called on President Edgar Lungu to help them get their terminal benefits amounting to K34, million which they have been chasing for the past 24 years.
The workers, who retired in 1991, said ZSIC failed to pay them their dues which prompted them to take the corporation to the industrial relations court in 1996 which ruled in their favour.
Speaking on behalf of the affected retirees, Marko Phiri said ZSIC appealed the judgement to the Supreme Court in 2004 which also upheld the ruling.
“After tabulating the figures, our lawyer Mutakela Lisimba submitted to ZSIC all the total costs (K34, 000,000) but they did not reply or respond,” he said.
Mr Phiri said in 2008 ZSIC issued a consent letter in which they complied to pay the retired workers K182, 308 only.
He said all retirees had refused to accept the amount because it did not reflect the correct figures.
Another retiree further appealed to President Lungu to intervene in the matter since he was a lawyer as well who understood the legal fraternity very well.
Johnwell Simwala said out of the 438 members that took the case to court, 97 had already died leaving their families in abject poverty and other financial hardships.
Mr Simwala said it was unfortunate that ZSIC refused to pay its former workers their dues even after the Industrial Relations and Supreme Court had ruled against the corporation.
“We don’t know why it has taken ZSIC a long time to pay us our dues even when the Supreme Court ruled in our favour,” he said.