PRIMARY and Secondary Education minister Lazarus Dokora on Wednesday issued a stern warning to schools which were abetting the scourge of piracy through the illegal mass reproduction of books they used to circumvent costs, while prejudicing book producers.
BY WINSTONE ANTONIO
In his address, while officially opening this year’s edition of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF), Dokora said his ministry did not tolerate the pirating of books.
The minister said piracy was tantamount to abuse of public funds and sternly warned school authorities that they would be charged if found pirating books.
“The untoward thing about piracy is that it has become second nature in the education system. (The ministry’s) permanent secretary will send a circular to all schools reminding them of the risk of book piracy,” he said.
Dokora’s warning came at a time authors and book publishers have lost revenue worth thousands of dollars to pirates who were making a killing through the sale of cheap, mass-produced photocopied books.
Zimbabwe International Book Fair Association (ZIBFA) interim chairperson Blazio Tafireyi recently told NewsDay that stakeholders in the book industry had finalised drafting the Anti-Book Piracy petition, which they would hand over to Parliament as they seek support to curb the piracy cancer in the country.
“The Anti-Book Piracy draft petition is now under the consultative process where stakeholders are refining it and will be handed to the Parliament of Zimbabwe after the Zimbabwe International Book Fair,” he said.
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Dokora, however, said the government was pleased to note that there was an effective qualitative and efficient production and distribution system of educational books in Zimbabwe. “It is my hope that the book exhibitions are done in other major cities so as to allow more people to be exposed and to interact with the variety of books offered by publishers and book shops,” he said. Dokora said there was need to resolve the issue of connectivity for e-learning, adding that three companies have been demonstrating their proof of the concept. “The connectivity solution must not weigh down schools in unsustainable costs, it must be efficient and it must be a solution that allows ministry full control over its direct private work,” he said. This year’s edition of the annual literary exhibition was running under the theme, “Igniting Interest in Reading for Sustainable Development.”
