Job cuts at Capital Radio: 2 laid off as panic engulf workers
Panic has engulfed workers at one of the Malawi’s privately owned FM stations Capital Radio as the its ongoing restructuring drive continues showing its ugly head.
Inside sources at the station told Nyasa Times that the restructuring bloom is expected to sweep all the departments but it has started with News and Current Affairs department.
Confirmed reports show that one of the sub-editors Charity Chimungu-Phiri got her letter of termination last Friday while another Sub-editor Chikondi Juma has been fired on Friday, September 14 – a move likely to attract the wrath of women’s rights activists like the Gender Links who are pushing for more women in the media.
“The management has been complaining that it is failing to make enough money to pay its staff hence the restructuring exercise”.
However the development is causing panic among workers which is likely to affect their morale as they don’t know who will be next on the chop list.
Criteria of firing remain a mystery but reports show that disadvantaged are those who have been on bad terms with the radio’s s station manager who doubles as marketing manager, Arlene Grimes elder daughter of the owner of the station Alaudin Osman.
Media analysts are describing the developing as sad to the radio station which has long been accused of being a training ground for journalists, a development which has made the station easily surpassed by the new kid on block Zodiak Broadcasting Station in all fronts.
“Capital radio could have been more popular than Zodiak but the problem is that the stations lose members staff easily through dismissals and resignations. I wonder if there is any founding member working at the moment and losing experienced journalist in such a manner is a sad development,” says a journalism lecturer at the Malawi Polytechnic.
The lecturer, who refused to the named for his close connection with Mr Osman, said doesn’t think the station can fail to pay its employees saying “the fact is that they want to recruit new members of staff to replace the old ones as it has been the norm”.
The lecturer further said because the best the station could have done is to be giving refresher courses to its workers so that they could be moving with the times.
Established in 1999 in Blantyre, the station mainly broadcasts in the country’s major cities and towns due to limited number of transmitters.
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