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Minister Dokora

Blessings Chidakwa Midlands Bureau
Education institutions have suffocated the textbook industry in Zimbabwe through systematic massive photocopying of books, a Government official said yesterday.

Speaking at the Gweru International Book Festival, Midlands provincial administrator Mr Abiot Marongwe, castigated schools, colleges and universities that he said were largely to blame for book piracy, as they were through systematic photocopying of textbooks.

“It has been critically observed that education institutions are perpetrators of massive systematic photocopying of literature books,” he said. “Most of the schools, colleges and universities have since acquired heavy duty photocopying machines and killing the authors. Let them desist from these malpractices.”

Mr Marongwe urged writers to guard their works jealously by making sure that they invoked copyright laws. He lamented that low penalties imposed on copyright offenders were not deterrent enough to keep them from stopping the act.

“We will continue to urge authorities to protect the intellectual property rights of artists, by implementing available laws as well as arresting those who fringe copyrights by photocopying books without permission,” said Mr Marongwe.

This comes at a time when Primary and Secondary Education Minister Lazarus Dokora recently urged headmasters and those entrusted with buying school material to work within the confines of the copyright laws, adding that it was a shame that some of his officials were arraigned before the courts accused of violating copyright laws.

Minister Dokora said he attended a court session in Marondera, where a headmaster was being charged for violating the Copyright Act by photocopying an Ordinary Level set book.

The accused did not even appreciate that what he did was wrong, instead he thought he had saved money for the school. Speaking at the just ended ZIBF indaba, the festival director, Blazio Tafireyi, said there was need for political will to end piracy. “The main problem is lawlessness in the country, which only the Government, through the police, can deal with conclusively,” he said.