In an interview with The Zimbabwean, the President of the Apex Council, a body which brings together civil servants unions in salary negotiations, David Dzatsunga, said the council would take advantage of the period before the elections to push for salary increments.
He warned that the government’s failure to meet its side of the bargain would result in unprecedented industrial action that would likely disrupt the forthcoming referendum and elections slated for next year.
“We will be going into an election next year and we are going to take advantage of the vulnerability of politicians to get a fair deal. If our demands are not met, we will not participate in the referendum or elections,” said Dzatsunga. He said that government heavily relied on civil servants.
“We know that during processes like the referendum and elections, the government needs us. We have a lot of ideas that we want to translate into action early next year but that would require the consensus of the Apex Council,” said Dzatsunga. Besides the issue of paltry salaries, Dzatsunga said civil servants were angry that those who took part in the 2012 national population census enumeration process were yet to be paid. “We have civil servants who took part in the census process who are yet to be paid and we are saying we will not be participating in any process before the government pays what is due to us. I think the government has got a lot of confidence building to do before it can engage civil servants in any process,” said Dzatsunga.
He said that the announcement by Finance Minister Tendai Biti in November this year that civil servants would be getting inflation related salary increments was “totally unacceptable”.
The President of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, Takavafira Zhou, concurred with Zvatsunga and said they would be taking advantage of the period before elections to push for salary increments.
“History has taught us that the only time you can push the government to do something meaningful is the period before an election. So there is likely to be industrial action early next year. The government expects us to play a crucial role in elections and yet they are not paying us properly. That’s unacceptable,” said Zhou.
He said the PTUZ would take an aggressive stance in pushing for salary increments.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti is on record saying the government was operating on a shoe string budget and could not afford to increase salaries for the estimated 230 000 civil servants in the country.
Post published in: News