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Pamela Shumba Senior Reporter—
TRANSPORT and Infrastructural Development Minister, Obert Mpofu dropped a bombshell yesterday, saying the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has no money to clear its workers’ salary backlog. Angry NRZ workers, who are owed 11 months’ salaries by the ailing parastatal, went on strike last week. They demanded their outstanding salaries and allowances and said they would take their grievances to Minister Mpofu.
They also petitioned the parastatal’s board, urging it to fire the company’s management for alleged mismanagement.
Minister Mpofu, however, yesterday appealed to the restive workers to bear with the parastatal, saying there was no money to pay their salaries.
“The NRZ has no money right now to address the requests put forward by the employees. When I took over as minister of transport, there was a resolution by the previous board to retrench half the staff at the NRZ and I resisted because I was hoping that we would have come up with a solution by now,” he said.
Minister Mpofu was speaking at a Press conference soon after officially opening the 7th Africa transportation technology transfer conference in Bulawayo.
“The ultimate solution lies with getting an investor to capitalise and rehabilitate NRZ, which is what government is working on now. We’ve been engaging a number of serious investors that are interested such as Chinese companies and the (Development Bank of Southern Africa) DBSA but this is a process. We can’t get an investor today and things start moving tomorrow,” he said.
Minister Mpofu said foreign investors have their own systems that need to be followed before they could embark on such a massive project like the NRZ.
He appealed to the workers to bear with the parastatal as he was confident the NRZ challenges would come to pass.
“I want to assure the NRZ employees that government is doing everything it can to address these challenges. It’s not only NRZ (that needs attention) but actually the entire Bulawayo economy itself.
“As I’ve always said, the Bulawayo economy is influenced by how the NRZ performs because of its employment force of over 20,000 workers. It’s unfortunate that it will take a bit of time for the NRZ to be back on its feet,” said Minister Mpofu.
He said the NRZ board and management were dealing with the industrial action by the workers, adding that the ministry had not been engaged over the issue yet.
“I hope that the management and board will deal with the situation and come up with an amicable conclusion as we make efforts to identify a suitable partner to revive the railway system,” said Minister Mpofu.
In their petition workers accused management of lack of capacity to manage the organisation, failure to resolve the employees’ salaries saga, reluctance to implement measures to protect employees’ tenure of employment, skewed human resources policies and top heavy management structure.
They said the top heavy management structure was bleeding the organisation.
The workers said in 1999, when the parastatal moved about 12,3 million tonnes of freight with a staff complement of 10,000 it had only one general manager and four assistant general managers.
They said now the parastatal had a staff complement of less than 6,000 employees and moves less than five million tonnes of freight per year yet it has a general manager and five directors.
Online Reporter