By PERPETUAL SICHIKWENKWE –
A FORMER lawyer at the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and six other former employees have dragged the commission to court demanding that it pays them their redundancy packages and other allowances.
James Mataliro, former senior legal and prosecutions officer, information systems officers Francis Malama and Tiyezge Phiri and former investigations officers Dale Sikute, Kalumbu Hamabwe, Mukatimui Mphande and Tobias Michelo have sued ACC and the Public Service Pension Fund Board as first and second responded.
The seven have asked the Lusaka High Court to declare that the method used in the calculation of their redundancy package be computed based on the prevailing salary at the time they were declared redundant.
They want the court to order ACC to pay them full redundancy package as stipulated by the provision of clause 4, 2, 3 (c) ( II) of the ACC conditions of service.
The ex-workers want to be paid arrears on account of non-private practicing allowance from September 2013 and each of them to be paid a sum equivalent to 70 per cent of the basic salary for the period between September 2013 and June 2014 on account of under payment of?housing allowance.
They also want payment of acting allowance for the affected plaintiffs and payment of uniform allowances among other things.
They were employed by ACC on a permanent and pensionable basis on diverse dates and their conditions of services including basic monthly salary, housing allowance calculated at 10?per cent of basic salary, education allowance and special allowance.
In May 2012, ACC suspended the payment of recruitment and retention allowance citing instruction from permanent secretary, Public Service Management Division (PSMD).
Under the new conditions, a lot of things changed such that housing allowance was now being calculated at 30 per cent of their basic salary.
On December 10, 2013 they were given three months’ notice of redundancy which expired on March 9, 2014 but they were not given their full entitlements which they are claiming.
