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Opinion Cuthbert Mavheko
In his inaugural address to Parliament on the occasion of the eighth session of the august House, last year, President Mugabe set the tone for the country’s legislature by declaring “zero tolerance” on corruption. The President’s uncompromising stance on corruption demonstrates his concern about the scourge and its devastating impact on the national economy.
Buoyed by the overwhelming mandate it received in the July 31, 2013 harmonised elections the ruling Zanu PF Government has declared war on corruption, opening a can of worms that has sent tipples of shock across the length and breadth of the country. Obviously, the massive salaries and perks being earned by chief executives and top management at PSMAS, ZBC, Harare City Council and so forth are just a tip of the proverbial iceberg.
It is the considered view of this scribe that more outrageous salaries are likely to be exposed if investigations are conducted into the affairs of other government-owned enterprises.
The African barometer released in December 2013, reveals that Zimbabwe is ranked top three of the most corrupt countries in Africa behind Egypt and Nigeria. In 2008, Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) disclosed that Zimbabwe loses a staggering $5 million to corruption everyday. Now, isn’t that a shocking state of affairs?
Corruption is, by its very nature, aberration and it harms, not only public and private institutions, but terribly taints the image of the country. If it is not nipped in the bud, it can obliterate all efforts currently being made to resuscitate Zimbabwe’s ailing economy and put it back on track for prosperity.
The media in Zimbabwe has played its watchdog role very well by exposing corruption in Government- owned enterprises. However, it has concentrated more on public institutions and has done very little, if anything, to unearth corruption in the private sector.
If indeed the truth be told without fear or prejudice, corruption has assumed mind-boggling dimensions in the private sector, especially in industry, and the need for the Government and other relevant stakeholders to act decisively to eradicate this terrible scourge cannot be over-emphasised.
A survey conducted by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), not so long ago, shows that some top executives in the private sector earn morally indefensible salaries, bonuses and allowances while ordinary workers sweat for peanuts. In the hospitality sector, for instance, chief executives earn in excess of $11,000 a month while ordinary shop floor workers labour for an infinitesimal $154 a month.
In the insurance sector, the highest paid employee ekes out a living on a mere $256 a month. And in the banking sector, chief executives pocket as much as $12,000 a month against $497 for the lowest paid worker.
The pattern is chillingly similar in other sectors of the economy. In the retail sector, some regional managers earn astronomic salaries suspected to top $22,000 a month while those perched on lower rungs of the remuneration ladder struggle to make ends meet on emoluments that are far, far below the breadline.
Sources privy with the goings on in the manufacturing sector say CEOs and top management in the sector earn between $10 000 and $16 000 a month, exclusive of bonuses and allowances. In addition, they receive a plethora of mouth-watering feather-beddings which include top-of-the range company vehicles, flamboyant mansions in leafy suburbs, inflated fuel and cellphone allowances, bonuses, lucrative annual company sponsored holidays abroad and free education for their children, most of who attend expensive private schools.
The shocking paradox is that the majority of workers in the manufacturing sector earn an average of $200 a month. To add salt to injury, most of these workers are not provided with transport and foot to and from work daily. What I personally find disconcerting is that a company executive who earns $16 000 a month and a poor shop floor worker who gets a monthly salary of $200 eat the same food and buy from the same shops.
In all honesty, is that fair? As a nation, we should surely hang our heads down in collective shame that such things are happening in a modern, independent Zimbabwe — a country whose nationhood and sovereignty is founded on socialist philosophy.
I stand to be corrected if I am wrong. But surely, if a company can afford to pay a single manager $16,000 a month, plus bonuses, allowances and other lucrative perks, then there is no justification whatsoever why ordinary workers should toil for starvation wages or go for months without pay.
Employers in industry argue that they cannot hike the wages/salaries of ordinary workers to Poverty Datum Line levels because their enterprises are financially hamstrung. This raises several pertinent questions: if companies are in financial dire straits, as employers in industry would have us believe, then where is the money that they (employers) are investing in luxurious vehicles for top management coming from?
Why, if I may humbly ask, do the salaries, perks and allowances of top management in industry continue to be hiked while the emoluments of ordinary workers are dwindling? And why is top management treated like a scared cow and not expected to experience a decline in its living standards in spite of the fact that our economy is mired in recession? What is so special about top management?
It should be said, loud and clear, that the bulk of white employers in industry are greedy and only think of filling their bellies.
Their callous disregard for the welfare of ordinary workers is indeed shocking. They pay a minuscule number of workers – and these are, in most cases, black managers, hefty salaries and then use them to hold hordes of ordinary shop floor workers, under lock and key, in the dark catacombs of economic deprivation.
Alas, ordinary workers in industry are being treated like beasts of burden and hewers of wood, and no-one seems to care.
They are overworked, underpaid and discarded like garbage when they become incapacitated through injury, old age or illness.
To make matters worse, workers unions, which were formed to serve and protect workers’ interests continue selling a dummy to the hapless workers with one hand while accepting pieces of silver, or is it gold, from the same employers who are exploiting workers with the other hand.
Such is the tragic state of affairs in industry today.
Online Reporter