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Angry farm workers are damaging property including vehicles, farm houses, barns and tractors to spite farm owners, most of them Zanu (PF) chefs and senior government officials, who are staunchly refusing to award a salary hike, in line with Zimbabwe’s galloping hyperinflation.
Representatives from the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union and the Agricultural Labour Bureau are hopping from one farm to the other trying to break the impasse amid reports that resettled A2 farmers, who are now the employers, are not registered with any association that could represent them in the collective bargaining for better wages. Farm workers are currently earning a monthly wage of $8,300 and they want this increased to $23,000.
Meanwhile tobacco production figures for this year have been revised downwards following the destruction of seedlings by striking workers and the wilting of others due to lack of watering during the strike period.
The sunshine Sunday Mail newspaper, which parrots government policy, claimed last weekend that tobacco output would ramp to 80 million kgs this year up from 50 million kgs last season, but independent agro-experts rubbished these forecasts saying the projected figures were too optimistic and at best the country could expect only 35 million kgs given the chaos on the farms. – Gift Phiri
15.2.2007
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Disgruntled farm workers trash equipment-(15-02-07)
HARARE - Property including tractors, barns and crops is being destroyed on grabbed farms while millions of dollars in hard currency are being lost in potential horticultural earnings, due to the ongoing nationwide go-slow by about 250,000 farm workers who are demanding a 200 percent salary increase