adminTHE Zimbabwe Banks and Allied Workers’ Union (ZIBAWU) has accused Standard Chartered Zimbabwe of exporting jobs to its Kenyan and Indian counterparts by migrating a number of processes and services to these domains. The union claims that the transference of these processes and services is a strategy to create an artificial “internal crisis” to justify ongoing retrenchments.
ZIBAWU general secretary Mr Peter Mutasa said; “They (StanChart) are migrating certain processes to Kenya and India, meaning that they are creating jobs for these domains using our resources while at the same time depriving us of our jobs.
“The bank has stopped card production . . . procurement, bank reconciliation and other minor services like getting a certificate of balance for clients have been transferred to Kenya. This has an impact firstly through loss of jobs by acquiring services that can be obtained locally.”
StanChart Zimbabwe is currently embroiled in a retrenchment wrangle with at least 21 middle managers who last week filed a High Court application seeking to bar the bank from retrenching them in view of a pending finalisation of their labour challenge at the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare.
In response StanChart Zimbabwe head of corporate affairs Mrs Lillian Hapanyengwi did not deny the ZIBAWU claims, stating the bank was in full compliance with local regulations.
“Regrettably the realignment of our strategy has meant some staff losses in markets across our business in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
“As always, we retain the strictest level of compliance with local regulations and endeavour to reallocate roles as far as possible to minimise any negative impact,” she said in response to emailed questions. – BH24.
Online Reporter