By CHUSA SICHONE  –

IN line with this year’s Miss Pageant Zambia’s theme, ‘Employment creation: Everyone’s responsibility’, the top five models have earned themselves jobs!
The 2015 Miss Pageant Zambia winner Mapalo Mulenga was offered a job as customer relations officer at the Lusaka Grand Hotel.
The first princess Venus Vlahakis and second princess Monde Nasilele have both been employed as cashiers by Inscor.
The other two contestants, Cynthia Sakala and Mariana Katende, will work as receptionists at Diamonds of Lusaka Casino, which was the venue for this year’s Miss Pageant Zambia.
Miss Pageant Zambia national coordinator Lee Sokoni confirmed the development in an interview with Sunday Times Entertainment during the week.
Meanwhile, Sokoni disclosed that plans were underway to rename Miss Pageant Zambia as Miss Hope Pageant Zambia.
Miss Hope Pageant Zambia is a combination of Miss Hope Zambia and Miss Pageant Zambia, which are both coordinated by Sokoni.
Sokoni said the aim of renaming the beauty pageant was to distinguish Miss Pageant Zambia from Miss Zambia.
“Although we haven’t concluded, we are trying to come up with something like Miss Hope Pageant Zambia so that it looks very different from Miss Zambia,” he said.
Sokoni said some people were mistaking Miss Pageant Zambia for Miss Zambia and felt it was prudent to hold Miss Hope Zambia and Miss Pageant Zambia the same day and under one name.
He assured that once the name change was effected, it would not affect Miss Pageant Zambia’s original concept.