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Daily News fires its staff
23/02/2004 18:49 - (SA)
Harare - The company that operates Zimbabwe's embattled Daily News, which is highly critical of President Robert Mugabe, said on Monday it was firing most of its 250 employees "with immediate effect" because the government is preventing it from publishing.
Sam Sipepa Nkomo, the chief executive officer of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, which publishes the paper, told a news conference in Harare that the company would retain a core group of about 50 people.
"ANZ regrets to announce it has decided to retrench all its employees with immediate effect," he said.
The Daily News, which was launched about five years ago, was closed down by armed police in September last year, at which time it had a readership of 900 000.
It resumed publishing on January 22 following a High Court order that forced police to vacate its premises and stop interfering with its operations.
The media laws have been contested by the independent and foreign media here, but on February 5 the Supreme Court upheld some as constitutional.
The court ruled that it was a criminal offence for any journalist to operate without accreditation from a government-appointed body.
Fearing arrest, the Daily News journalists refused to continue working for the paper without accreditation and on February 6, the paper vanished from the streets.
- AFP
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