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Agriculture Minister Dora Siliya
Information and Broadcasting Services Minister, Dora Siliya says the decision by times of Zambia to publish some article in Chinese is one way of exploring new market opportunities to raise more revenue to enhance its operations.
Ms. Siliya has told parliament in a ministerial statement that the board and management of the times of Zambia in 2015 began to explore various ways to raise resources for the company.
Ms Siliya says one of the strategies identified is to attract new business through subscriptions and advertising targeted at new commercial communities.
She says the targeted commercial communities include Turkish, French
and Chinese.
Ms Siliya says it’s in this regard that the times of Zambia board and management decided to translate and reproduce some carefully selected stories of the day in mandarin.
The minister is hopeful that this will expose the paper to potentially new income from a community that would not necessary be attracted to it, because of language barrier.
She adds that the alleged discrimination against the people of Zambia by the Times of Zambia newspaper’s publication of an article in Chinese when there has been no such publication in any local languages does not arise.
Ms. Siliya further adds that the current status of times of Zambia is that it has 286 employees and the company has total assets of k86.4 million with liabilities amounting to k748.5 million.
Speaker of the National Assembly Patrick Matibini had directed the minister to issue a ministerial statement following a point of order raised by Monze Central Member of Parliament Jack Mwiimbu.