By Rainos Mukanya
A showdown is looming between the government of Zimbabwe and civil servants, especially teachers over the indefinite postponement of a crucial National Joint Negotiating Council (NJNC) meeting which was supposed to be held on Friday in Harare.
NJNC brings together negotiators from government and civil service unions.
The highly anticipated meeting is expected to address the civil servants salary issue following government’s promise that civil servants would get their salary increments, awarded in January, in April.
In a statement released Thursday, the Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ) said the Civil Service Commission (CSC) did not give reasons for the postponement of the meeting.
“The NJNC meeting that was supposed to be held on Friday at 1000hrs has been postponed indefinitely with no reasons given.” The statement said.
The postponement of the meeting means that schools will close with teachers still in the dark on whether they would get the promised salary increments or not.
“Schools are about to close and we have no official information to give you with regards our salary increment and conditions of service in general,” added the statement warning government that teachers would take action if the promised increments are not effected in April.
Civil servants were awarded salary increments in January, but the government failed to effect the increments owing to liquidity problems being experienced in the country.
Unconfirmed reports have surfaced to the effect that government could still fail to honour its promise to effect increments in April as the Finance Ministry continues to grapple with cash flow challenges making it very difficult for it to sustain government’s huge wage bill.
In recent months the cash flow challenges seem to have worsened as evidenced by government’s failure to pay salaries on time.
Efforts to get a comment from the CSC were fruitless as its chairman, Mariyawanda Nzuwa was not reachable on his phone.
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