Govt breaks silence on Airzim

application by the airline’s workers seeking to have the firm placed under judicial management.
This comes as the airline’s marketing and public relations executive Ms Shingai Taruvinga announced yesterday that the airline will resume domestic flights next Monday.
She said the airliner will service the Harare-Bulawayo-Victoria Falls route four days a week.
“The routes will be serviced on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays,” said Ms Taruvinga.
“The plane will leave Harare at 0700hrs and arrive in Bulawayo at 0815hrs before leaving at 0845hrs and arriving in Victoria Falls at 1000hrs. The plane will leave Victoria Falls at 1030hrs and arrive in Harare at 1215hrs.”
Airzim shelved both domestic and international flights when one of its planes was impounded at Gatwick International Airport in London over a debt.
The plane was rescued a few weeks later after Government helped pay the US$1,2 million debt to parts supplier, American General Supplies.
It emerged in the court papers that the Government and other organisations pumped in over US$31 million into the airline’s coffers in the last few years to revive its operations.
Secretary for Transport, Communications and Infrastructure Development Mr Partson Mbiriri said in his opposing affidavit that the workers were “misinformed and misguided” in seeking judicial management for the airline.
He said the Government was making frantic efforts to revitalise the airline and progress was already being realised.
“In Government’s considered view, there is no basis whatsoever for the judicial management of Air Zimbabwe as sought by some misinformed and misguided elements in the airline’s workforce,” he said.
“It appears to me that the appellants have no clue what the possible implications of their chosen route may be. I would thus hope that the recent Cabinet decision on the airline is allowed to be implemented, as indeed it already is, in the national interest.”
Mr Mbiriri said Cabinet had already resolved to tackle the problems at Airzim.
“To this end, at its 31st meeting of Thursday 20 October 2011, Cabinet resolved to restore normalcy in the operations of Air Zimbabwe through the assumption or ring fencing of the Air Zimbabwe debt, restructuring the airline into a lean and effective organisation through a process of retrenchment to be financed by Government,” he said.
Mr Mbiriri said the airline had secured a strategic partner to enter into a joint venture arrangement to run a rebranded Airzim.
To revive Airzim, lessons have to be drawn from successful airlines in Africa and beyond.
“Given the above, I wish to confirm that a working party of officials is actively addressing all the Cabinet resolutions and material progress has already been realised,” said Mr Mbiriri.
The court documents show that other parastatals like the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe, Central Vehicle Registry and the Zimbabwe National Road Administration chipped in with rescue financial packages for the national airline on several occasions.
Last year alone, Zinara paid US$1,7 million to Airzim creditors and these were mainly to settle fuel debts, while ZMDC parted with US$500 000 the same year.
CAAZ in 2003 paid US$775 000 for Airzim’s insurance and in June last year, the CVR chipped in with US$200 000 and the funds were paid to BP and Shell Marketing.
Airzim acting chief executive Mr Innocent Mavhunga said in his opposing affidavit that Government had demonstrated that it is committed to ensuring the viability of Air Zimbabwe.
He said the employees’ thinking that

Airzim will not become viable if not rid of the shareholder, board of directors and executive management control was fallacious.
“I am at a loss as to how applicants may have arrived at the conclusion that respondents will survive and become viable without shareholder support,” said Mr Mavhunga.
“A schedule of shareholder interventions showing that Government has so far injected more than US$30 million towards the settlement of the respondents’ debts among other expenses is also presented.
“Respondents have been in constant communication with all its employees individually and collectively and there is an understanding and acceptance by employees that the challenges facing the respondents are being addressed by the shareholder.”
Mr Mavhunga said leaders of the National Air Workers Union and the Air Transport Union who filed the application to place the airline on judicial management were not acting on behalf of all workers.
He said the workers’ leaders were not permitted by the law to institute proceedings for judicial management of the airline.
Mr Mavhunga said failure by the national airline to pay its workers during the period before 2009 was mainly caused by the “currency distortions and onslaught on the Zimbabwe dollar”.
The failure by the airline to pay its workers from July 2011 was caused by a strike by pilots, which caused the grounding of the entire fleet for almost two months.