adminMarvelous Moyo Gwanda Correspondent
GWANDA Municipality workers yesterday went on strike after going for five months without receiving salaries.
Workers gathered outside the municipality offices, singing and dancing, in a bid to force authorities to attend to their grievances.
They also carried placards with inscriptions “Aliyangeki Ngani, iGovernment inika izisebenzi zayo iholo ngesikhathi Nyangazonke” and “Leadership Crisis- Siyakukhumbula Baba G.J Mlilo.”
Gilbert Mlilo retired recently as Gwanda town clerk.
In April, workers embarked on a two-day strike after having gone for three months without salaries but the action was halted after the council and workers’ representatives agreed to wait until August, for pay dates to be normalised.
Workers told Chronicle the municipality had failed to fulfill its April promises citing, “financial challenges following low revenue collections.”
They said they could not continue working without salaries and had notified the municipality about their intention to down tools.
“On July 31, 2014, we wrote a letter to the municipality informing them that we will go on a strike on August 20 and cited our reasons. This morning they (municipality) made attempts to get us arrested for striking but police told them that the strike is legal. The biggest challenge we have is that the management doesn’t want to speak to us. They’ve said they are not ready to talk about our salaries.
“During Mlilo’s time things were much better because he was always ready to listen to us,” said Sipho Ndlovu, the Zimbabwe Urban Councils Workers’ Union (ZUCWU) Gwanda Branch chairperson.
By yesterday afternoon, council efforts to negotiate with workers were in the pipeline with the workers committee demanding the presence of a labour officer to meet with the management.
Recently, workers wanted to attach municipality properties over nonpayment of salaries but failed to secure a court order.
“We have realised that the only thing we can do is to go on strike. Banks are demanding loan repayments, landlords want rentals while we have children to look after. Some marriages have broken down while a few others are on the rocks because of this salaries problem. We can only suspend the strike when government says so. We think management is negotiating in bad faith as they have moved to get the strike declared illegal,” said Ndlovu.
Contacted for a comment, the deputy mayor Councillor Albert Ndlovu said the municipality hoped to negotiate with the workers.
The municipality on Tuesday wrote an urgent application for a show cause order to the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Cde Nicholas Goche.
“Stemming from the local authority’s distressed position, urgent and immediate intervention from the ministry is sought that a show cause order be issued so that the employees do not engage in an industrial action as the effects will plunge the local authority into serious dire straits.
“Management is willing to continue engaging the workforce through their representatives to chart a way forward as to how the outstanding wages and salaries will be cleared,” reads the letter signed by acting town clerk Priscilla Nkala.
The municipality is sinking in an $8 million debt with more than $1 million owed for outstanding salaries and $28,000 owed to retirees.
derick.khumalo