A letter leaked to The Zimbabwean by highly-placed sources indicated that the workers had done a splendid job for Mugabe and Zanu (PF) during the July 2013 election campaign and deserved better.
Written by the GMB Workers Union, dated April 28, 2014, signed by S Machaya and addressed to The Office of the President and Cabinet, the letter says: “We have diligently carried out government programmes, inputs and grain-loan schemes according to directives and our role in all elections especially that of July 31, 2013 cannot be ignored. It seems we are being punished for being patriotic workers, hence our decision to appeal to your offices.
“Management always gives the excuse that government owes GMB $42 million as the reason for not paying workers … this prompted us to approach the shareholder before we get to the National Railways of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Cooperation situation.”
The workers said their future was bleak as the pension fund, housing project and medical aid had all stalled a year ago due to non-remittance of contributions by the employer – despite the contributions being deducted from workers’ salaries.
Two days after dispatching the letter of appeal to Mugabe, the Union wrote an internal memorandum letter to the company giving it a 14 days ultimatum to solve the salary issue. The saga comes amid reports that GMB management looted the parastatal assets including vehicles and financial resources through suspicious allocations. An audit conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General for the corporate 2012 books revealed that GMB failed to account for more than $1 million and 20,000 of its assets.
GMB has over 2,200 workers at its 85 deports around the country. Questions forwarded twice to the GMB corporate communications manager, Muriel Zemura, did not receive any response.
It was impossible to get hold of Joseph Made, whose ministry is responsible for GMB’s affairs.
Post published in: News
As of now we are currently going through a very dificulty phase of not having cash for rentals to our Landlords, and this caused us to have many conflicts with our Landlords. Hunger and poverty insisted us to say all these nonsences.