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Davies Ndumiso Sibanda
THE prevailing salaries and wages position is fast triggering skills flight as some professionals whose skills are needed elsewhere in the world are packing their bags to leave with some having already left.
In one of my earlier articles, I highlighted the huge disparity in salaries and wages of employees doing the same job but working in different industries. We have managing directors in manufacturing and retail who earn as little as $7 000 (RTGS/bond) and we have an artisan in some sectors who earns $23 000. We have a general worker in one industry earning $6 000 while in another industry earns $450. We have a human resources manager in one industry earning $70 000 and in another he earns $900.
In agriculture the minimum wage is about $360. I have not ventured to cover salaries in Government and parastatals where the situation is not better as there are reports of some teachers who are withdrawing their children from boarding schools because the fees are way above what they earn. We have a situation where an individual who looks after cattle (herd boy) in some parts of Matabeleland earning more than the headmaster of the local school.
This situation is not a laughing matter anymore as more workers are getting financially embarrassed. The first victim of skills flight is likely to be the mining industry where salaries of managerial and technical staff have been greatly eroded, particularly in the gold sector where low foreign currency retention does not allow organisations to pay decent wages. It must be noted that mining jobs and a number of parastatal jobs across industries are in demand all over the world and as long as people are not getting wages and salaries that are not regionally and globally competitive, they will leave for greener pastures. When that happens, our economy will suffer as capacity to meet our needs will have shrunk.
Some people are leaving for countries like South Africa, Canada and Australia. It takes one person to leave and others follow leaving organisations in a desperate position. This position is worsened by our ailing apprenticeship training given that many organisations that used to train are either closed or have lost the capacity to train quality artisans.
What then should we be doing about this national challenge? Employers and workers at various National Employment Councils and at works councils have tried to adjust salaries while balancing with ability to pay.
However, these efforts are also getting to a standstill given that salaries cannot continue to increase while industry is shrinking.
We have seen a number of people leaving formal employment in the last few days because transport alone consumes the whole pay.
All these tell us that something has gone terribly wrong and needs fixing.
Our challenge is now beyond NEC, individual employers alone but there is a need to engage Government and all stakeholders and come up with a durable solution that will arrest brain drain and put the economy back on its feet.
In conclusion, being no economist, I do not have a solution but the best I can do is remind everybody in business that something has gone terribly wrong with wages and salaries and there is a need for collective effort, thus the nation has to come together and sanitise the wages and salaries issue.
Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on: email:[email protected], mailto:[email protected]
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