Suffering from gross neglect, the building is owned by the National Railways Of Zimbabwe and is now home to desperate employees, who have gone for 10 months without salaries.
Dorcas Nyirenda* said she was evicted by her landlord at the end of April after failing to pay rent for three consecutive months. “I rented one room in Kambuzuma and my landlord could no longer accept my excuses.
“I spent two days sleeping outside before I decided to come and use this facility,” said Nyirenda, a mother of three who is a Grade A1 employee at the company, where she has worked for the past four years.
“The challenge is that there is no electricity and water at these premises and this poses serious health challenges to us and our families. There is nothing we can do because we are not getting any salaries and we cannot pay rentals,” she said. “Company houses are accommodating management and their friends, some of whom are not even NRZ employees. They give us excuses that those people are refusing to vacate company houses yet they have been sending security guards to evict us from here,” she added.
Another tenant who only identified herself as Mai Madyira said her daughter was at ‘home’ because she cannot afford to pay school fees. She said she had tried to engage the NRZ management to pay for her children’s education and deduct the money from her salary, but to no avail.
“Workers in the management sections have a long list of benefits. The company pays for their children’s education yet the need is with us: the lowly paid workers,” she said, on the brink of tears.
NRZ public relations manager, Fanuel Masikati said: “Yes we acknowledge that we have not paid them their salaries but it is not for 10 months. We are experiencing financial challenges but we are committed to settling all our salary arrears.”
Post published in: News