Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) acting Executive Director Patrick Mutimunshi says pornography still remains illegal and that those who do it to “keep the fire burning” with their loved ones should restrict it to their bedrooms.

And Mutimunshi says the authority will work with necessary security wings to ensure that leaking of private phone conversations is contained.

Speaking when he feature on Radio Pheonix’s Let the People Talk today, Mutimunshi also said there was no exception to the laws governing pornography.

“Pornography is clearly illegal, so whether you are sending to your loved ones and trying to keep the fire burning, you might as well find a way of doing that. If it’s between the two of you! I am not saying it is right, illegal is illegal, whether it’s the loved one trying to express their love, go and do it in your room as a way of burning fire together or whatever it is,” Mutimusho said.

“But what is illegal is illegal. The law states clearly that it is illegal for anyone to transmit, produce, or to have in possession any pornographic materials. It is really an aspect of personal digital etiquette. We need to promote social and family value.”

Mutimunshi however said it was not ZICTA’s responsibility to monitor what people were sending to each other.

“We are always in constant collaboration with the mobile service providers in everything we do, but it is not our job to collaborate and know what exactly people are sending. It’s not the regulator to know what is being sent from point A to point B. But when there is a crime or something that is of value of an investigation, that collaboration should be there and its always there, and it’s not only in Zambia, it’s done everywhere,” he said.

And Mutimushi said the authority would work with the necessary security wings to identify people behind the leaking of private phone conversations.

“That is a thing that should be investigated and I think we should work with necessary security wings to be able to find out how this can be contained. We have got MTN, Zamtel, and Airtel, definitely then you expect that, that kind of conversation can only come through from the network but the question is ‘Who is doing it?’ So these are some of the things that we need to look at. It’s very clear in the ECT Act, you can’t just put the conversation of anybody anywhere because that it against the law and there are fines to it, you can go to jail for that. So definitely these are some of the things that we have to be proactive about, to safeguard you and me, and when I am talking to somebody, I must be secure and protected. We will go through with necessary wings to be able to contain this,” he said.

Mutimushi also claimed that the recent raid at CEC Liquid Telecom, just two days after a recorded conversation between President Edgar Lungu’s press aide Amos Chanda and the Inspector General of Police Kakoma Kanganja was leaked, was a routine inspection.

“These are inspections which we do on a daily basis, I wouldn’t call them raids like It was reported. Within the law; if you look at the ECT Act, it gives the cyber security officer or the telecommunication act to go in a radio station, with a warrant of course, and see how compliant these service providers which we license are. So those are normal inspections which we do and we will continue doing that to ensure that our licensees are compliant,” Mutimushi said.

He also said ZICTA had noted various complaints from people regarding the billing of internet bundles by service providers and promised that the matter was being addressed.

“We don’t protect or favor any service provider but however we have seen that there has been quite a lot of complaints regarding the quality of services especially the aspect of bundles missing and the billing platforms coming on and all sorts of things. We have now strengthened our compliance unit, they are quite very aggressive and they are going to see to it that some of these things are going to reduce to levels which everyone will be happy about,” said Mutimunshi.