adminTemba Dube Senior Reporter
DISGRUNTLED National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) workers have petitioned four Ministers of State in their provinces urging them to approach Cabinet on their behalf to get a resolution to the ongoing salary dispute with their employer.Three workers’ unions, the Railway Artisans Union, Railway Association of Enginemen and Railway Association of Yard Operating Staff yesterday signed the petition that was forwarded to the Ministers of State for Provincial Affairs in Bulawayo, Harare, Manicaland and the Midlands.
The company owes workers about $55 million in salary arrears dating back 10 months and unpaid allowances since 2009.
Police on Saturday barred the workers from taking to the streets in the four provinces to protest over the issues bedeviling the organisation.
The protestors were restricted to waving placards and addressing each other on NRZ premises.
Included in the petitions are issues of poor working conditions and unilateral slashing of salaries by the employer.
“We humbly present this, our petition to the resident minister (Minister of State for Provincial Affairs) for onward transmission to the authorities for possible consideration and resolution of our plight at Cabinet and national level,” read the petition.
The unions said they have tried everything they could including litigation and dialogue with the NRZ, to no avail.
They drew the attention of the ministers to the strategic role the NRZ played in the country’s economy, saying failure to act speedily on their grievances negatively affected the nation and its economic revival plans.
On Saturday, the unions accused NRZ management of continually slashing their salaries without consulting them.
They said the company was forcing them to work without safety clothing.
“Some of us are now getting 50 percent of their salaries and the salaries were slashed without our input.They should get their priorities right. As it is we are forced to work with dangerous heavy machinery without safety attire.
“When we get injured, they are the first ones to charge us under conditions of service. NSSA (National Social Security Authority) also does not compensate workers who get injured under blatantly unsafe working conditions,” said RAU secretary general Sithokozile Siwela.
It emerged during the protests that some workers in the higher C grade were owed up to $20,000 in unpaid allowances and salaries.
Workers said they had become modern day slaves as they worked for next to nothing.
“The whole management structure should be dissolved just as the NRZ board was dissolved. No amount of intervention will help this company as long as the present managers remain,” said a worker.
The workers, through their lawyer, Kennedy Masiye of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, on Wednesday filed an urgent High Court chamber application seeking to bar the police from preventing them from demonstrating.
Justice Charles Hungwe is still to pass judgement on the case.
Once an employer of choice, the NRZ has been reduced to selling scrap metal for survival.
Last week the company announced it had raised about $11 million selling scrap metal as a stop-gap measure that is part of its efforts to remain afloat.
NRZ’s acting general manager Engineer Lewis Mukwada is on record as saying the company’s machinery was obsolete as some of it was bought in the 1970s.
Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Dr Obert Mpofu recently told parliamentarians that NRZ is geared for a major turnaround with the government concluding negotiations with a South African financial institution for a $460 million loan to recapitalise the parastatal.
NRZ is struggling with a $144 million debt. It recorded a $17 million deficit in the first five months of 2014, after generating $44 million and spending $61 million.
The giant parastatal needs money to renew its aged lines and fleet which has wagons as old as 40 years.
The parastatal ferried about 3,6 million tonnes of goods last year, against a target of six million tonnes. This is a far cry from the business it recorded in 1998, when the NRZ moved 18 million tonnes of freight.
derick.khumalo