Government witholds civil servants’ payslips

Most civil servants, especially teachers, nurses and members of the security forces, are not happy with their poor working conditions, especially the low salaries that they earn, against the country’s hyper-inflationary environment.
Against that background, most civil servants have found it better to cross over to the neighbouring countries like Botswana and South Africa, where most of them have found better paying jobs.
Unlike other Zimbabwean citizens, who require visas to travel to South Africa, civil servants are able to cross into the neighbouring country using their work identity cards and payslips, and most of them have deserted their jobs in that manner, having travelled to that country as visitors, but disappeared into the glamour of that country.
Sources within the civil service told The Zimbabwean this week that all the government workers have still not received their December payslips, which they were supposed to get between the 15th and 23rd of that month.
“We got our salaries but we still have not received our payslips. No one has even bothered to explain to us what is really happening,” complained a Bulawayo-based teacher.
However, some employees at the Salary Service Beureau (SSB), which prints the civil servants’ payslips, revealed that the payslips were being with-held to try and curb a mass exodus of government workers, especially teachers, into South Africa.
“The government got wind that most teachers were intending to travel to South Africa during the December holidays, where they had been promised employment by some agents that are recruiting professionals here. To prevent that from happening, we were told to hold on to the payslips,’ said a worker who requested not to be named.
However, the Bulawayo spokesman for the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), Enoch Paradzayi, said that the government’s action did little to prevent the exodus of tecahers, as most managed to cross the border illegally.
“We know what the government did but most of the teachers have already crossed and there will be disaster when schools open. Already most of the schools have been advertising staff vaccancies, with some having already lost more than 12 teachers for a single school,” he said.
No comment could be obtained from the government.