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ANALYSTS have called on visionary foresight in the incumbent Labour Amendment Bill process citing that investment friendly labour laws must top the agenda. Following the termination on notice of an estimated 20 000 jobs by several companies in response to a recent Supreme Court ruling, President Robert Mugabe summoned Parliament from recess to amend the Labour Act and remove common law provisions that had been used by employers to unilaterally dismiss employees empty-handed.
The Labour Amendment Bill process was a boiling pot of contention in Parliament on Tuesday with mixed feelings over various statutes.
The Bill, however, sailed through the National Assembly without amendments after the legislature unanimously agreed that workers must be fairly compensated for service rendered during their employment tenure. Although the Parliamentary Legal Committee argued against the retrospective law decision, legislators disputed that there was need for fairness on both the employees and employer in treating the issue.
The decision in favour of workers comes after the Draft Bill published in the Government Gazette last week proposed compensating for all employees fired in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court ruling with minimum reparation of two weeks wage for every year they served.
Debate on the Bill continued yesterday (Thursday) in the Senate before the Presidential assent for it to become law is passed.
Africa University lecturer and economist, Mr Thomas Masese, said there was need to create a committee that would look into a case by case analysis of all companies in the compensation process of sacked employees.
“With fairness in mind, a committee should be set up to look into the finances of all the companies that dismissed employees. It is not a hidden secret that several companies were failing to retrench due to high cost involved with retrenchment, so a case by case analysis would be fair on both the employer and employee to avoid crippling the company,” said Mr Masese.
He added that it was important for Government not to fast-track the process for firefighting, but to comprehensively look into grave issues that would help attract foreign direct investment and make Zimbabwe’s labour laws appealing to investors.
Labour economist, Mr Prosper Chitambara, said at this point pragmatism must be observed given that damage had already been done.
“The damage has already been done and pragmatism with the future in mind is what we should focus on. I am sure the concern has been on gratifying both the employer and employee, but the biggest concern should be on perception risk to investors.
“Investment is what we want in Zimbabwe and amendments of our laws should prioritise this because we are in dire need of FDI and need to reduce the negative perception risk profile the country has,” said Mr Chitambara.
Independent arbitrator, Dr Noah Mutongoreni, said if due diligence was done on the Labour Amendment Bill, a lot of positive developments would come especially in the wake of the current International Monetary Fund staff monitored programme.The staff-monitored programme is a key component of the Zimbabwe Accelerated Arrears Clearance, Debt and Development Strategy and Zimbabwe Accelerated Re-engagement Economic Programme as the country moves towards clearing its $10 billion debt.
“We all know that cutting Government’s recurrent expenditure is part of the targets of the IMF staff-monitored programme that Zimbabwe adopted to get back in good books with international donors,” said Dr Mutongoreni.
Online Reporter