Dr Takavafira Zhou.
This year’s Workers’ Day comes against the backdrop of corona virus that has decimated workers throughout the world. On this day Ptuz urges employers to engage workers and collectively carry out covid 19 risk assessments before contemplating opening any workplace operations. The health and safety of workers must be prioritised as opposed to profit making and minimisation of operational costs. Rather than celebrating achievements of workers throughout the world in terms of reduction of working hours and improvement of salaries that are above PDL, workers in Zimbabwe are mourning the demise of workers’ salaries and conditions of service with monotonous regularity from grace to grass.
Indeed Zimbabwe has since 1991 seen the shrinking of job opportunities as gvt adopted neo-liberal policies that instead of creating employment opportunities decimated the workforce. A combination of a defective political system of sultanism, kleptocracy, defective economic system of statism, patronage, cryonism, lackeyism, clientelism and resurgent aggressive neo-liberalism, and routine rather than episodic high profile corruption and cartelism have cumulatively ruined the economy of Zimbabwe shattering the industries, creating more than 95% unemployment and reducing Zimbabweans into vending and disillusionment. Mthuli Ncube’s austerity measures for posterity have indeed proved to be a prescription that treats the disease by killing the patient. Workers’ salaries under the new dispensation are nothing more than starvation wages and do not resonate with PDL. Teachers in particular have all tested positive to poverty earning $3000, at a time the country has witnessed inordinate price increases that have rendered their salaries nothing more than starvation wages.
Workers’ salaries and conditions of service must be a product of binding collective bargaining and social dialogue that collectively promote industrial harmony and productivity. There is need to respect section 65 of the National Constitution and align all other regulations governing private and public sector workers to the constitution. The current deharmonisation of labour laws where private workers are governed by Labour Act and civil servants by the Public Service Act is unenviable.
The Apex Council that the government trust to engage in collective begging through the so called National Joint Negotiation Council (NJNC) as opposed to collective bargaining, has long outlived its usefulness and is now doing nothing other than romance with government. The government of Zimbabwe must respect ILO Conventions 87 and 98 that it ratified, let alone ratify and domesticate ILO Conventions 151 and 154 in order to improve its treatment of workers. The government must abandon its callousness and monumental labour injustice in treating its workers and restore salaries of workers’ purchasing power parity that was unilaterally mutilated and devalued when government changed from an average of US$520 to bond notes and RTGs. It is prudent for gvt to rekit industries and enhance the balance between import and export in order to generate production and stabilise its economy, while redollarisation is a must to foster economic recovery, let alone corporate governance characterised by accountability, transparency, efficiency, effectiveness and equity. The country’s economy can be greatly boosted by local processing of mineral resources thereby fostering value addition and beneficiation.
The country of Zimbabwe needs responsible leaders as opposed to poverty of leadership. It is only a country that treats its workers in a more humane manner that can tap and harness its resources for sustainable development. Teachers are in essence a vital cog of national development and with better salaries and fair labour practice can be innovative and industrious and generate life serving skills necessary for engineering development in Zimbabwe. The pursuit of pro poor and pro-worker policies in Zimbabwe are crucial to move the country forward as opposed to unfair labour practice, callousness, thuggery and thievery.
We remain convinced that responsible leadership, unity of purpose and effective utilisation of both human and natural resources, can foster development and propel Zimbabwe to economic stardom as opposed to the current political and economic quagmire, poverty and penury. There is urgent need improve and protect the health, safety and livelihoods of workers and the general populace as opposed to primitive accumulation of wealth by a few cartels. Teachers are managers of the greatest world asset, viz, children and must therefore treated with dignity and respect in order to enhance national, continental and global sustainable development.
Venceremos
Dr Takavafira M. Zhou (Ptuz President)
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