Scores of farm and factory workers, hired through a government sponsored industrial development group, have this week descended on Harare to protest seven months worth of non-payment.The group, representing an estimated 1000 workers employed by the governments Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), arrived in the city on Sunday to confront IDC management. The Corporation has not paid full salaries to its staff, from several farms, and the BonneZim packaging factory for almost a year. It has instead been forcing workers to keep working under false promises, but no payments have been made to the roughly 900 farm workers and 300 factory employees. The representative group of up to 80 workers arrived in trucks and vans in Harare, pledging to carry on with the demonstration until the IDC agrees to pay full salaries, backdated for seven months. The group has been sleeping in the vans since Sunday, waiting desperately for some positive move from IDC management.
SW Radio Africas Harare correspondent Simon Muchemwa explained that the IDC has only conceded to pay out a small amount to its desperate workers, but he added the figure only works out to a mere US$20 per month per employee.
US$20 is not enough money for even one person and most of these workers are supporting whole families, Muchemwa reported. Theyve said they will carry on with this demonstration until their full salaries are paid.
Muchemwa continued that the situation is indicative of the desperation facing most government employees across the country, as parastatals such as the IDC can no longer pay their staff. Muchemwa added that the knock-on effects are dire in the areas surrounding Harare, with many children not attending school, a rise in prostitution and increasing desperation.
The IDC has taken over a number of farms and factories in recent years as part of the land reform programme, including the BonneZim agro-packaging factory in Chegutu in 2005. In 2006, BonneZim and the IDC took over Kondozi Estate in a move that bolstered the ZANU PF grip on Zimbabwean horticulture. The Estate had been left almost completely ruined by land marauders in 2004, after the farm, owned by a black horticulturalist Edwin Moyo, was seized for resettlement.
Other similar farms were also ceded to the IDC in the past few years, but Muchemwa explained that the governments refusal to allow white blood back onto the properties, means there has been a major loss of management skills.
The IDC is completely broke and there have been offers by former commercial farmers and investors to help bring the IDC farms into profit, Muchemwa said. But the government refuses to allow white blood back into the commercial sector.
Post published in: Politics