The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Saturday, June 14, 1992 — Telephone, fax and telex lines at Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions offices countrywide were not working on Thursday and only started working again yesterday morning under unclear circumstances.

The president of the ZCTU, Mr Gibson Sibanda, said yesterday that he had been informed on Thursday by the secretary-general of the union, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, that communication lines had been cut without explanation at all their offices.

“We were not really able to establish whether the lines had been cut by the Posts and Telecommunication Corporation or not. However, the PTC could not have possibly cut our lines because we settled all our bills with them,” he said.

As a result of the disruption, Mr Sibanda said the ZCTU had a hard time trying to communicate with its outlying branches to prepare for the general council meeting to discuss the banning of nationwide demonstrations the union had planned to stage today.

The demonstrations were banned by the Minister of Home Affairs, Cde Moven Mahachi, on Wednesday.

“We were fortunate that some affiliate unions offered us their communication facilities to enable us to get in touch with all our members,” he said.

Contacted for comment, a senior PTC official said a possible explanation for the disruption was that ZCTU may not have settled all its bills in good time or that all the union’s lines throughout the country had a fault.

“I don’t deal with such issues directly but I know for certain that it is PTC policy that we disconnect all lines if bills are not settled in time, regardless of whether it’s a Government department or not, we disconnect the lines,” said the official.