HARARE - The cash-strapped Air Zimbabwe Holdings said it was going to address service delivery problems and dismissed reports that pilots were threatening to strike over unpaid wages. In a recent statement, the airliners management said its management was aware of challenges facing the airline and believed they were not insurmountable, adding that media reports that the flight crew had threatened to strike were misleading.
We continue to explore ways of solving the challenges and improve the working conditions of not just the pilots but all our Air Zimbabwe employees, the statement read. As management we have a role to make sure that that our Airline continues to operate and will continue implementing varying strategies to ensure its survival and serve our passengers as best as we can. We would like to state clearly that Pilots have not indicated any intention to down tools and that media reports are misplaced and misleading.
Last week sources at Air Zimbabwe wrote a letter to the airline management demanding a review of their salaries and over the border allowances which are believed to be among the lowest in the fledging airline industry.
The letter forced the CEO Peter Chikumba who was out of the country to cut short his trip overseas to come back home last Thursday to deal with the crisis, sources said.
Air Zimbabwe has in the past two years lost a host of experienced pilots to Kenyan Airways, Ethiopian Airways, South African Airways and Asian airlines such as Emirates and Qatar Airways.
Post published in: Economy