DEVELOPMENT-ZIMBABWE: Investor Absence Fuels Retrenchments

• by Ignatius Banda (bulawayo)
• Monday, June 22, 2009
• Inter Press Service

The company is threatened with closure just as the coalition between ZANU-PF and the MDC embarks on the gargantuan task of turning the country’s economic fortunes around.

‘‘Honestly, I do not know what do next,’’ lamented Dube, a parent of two, as she narrated how her future has suddenly become gloomy in a country where labour unions and government officials estimate that up to 95 percent of the country’s population are out of work.

‘‘It helps if you get something for being put on forced leave but we have not been given anything,’’ Dube explained, adding she had not been paid since the beginning of the year despite going to work each morning.

While Zimbabwean labour unions are pushing for higher salaries for the few workers still in formal employment, employers have responded with retrenchments. For Dube, this has been ‘‘a hard pill to swallow.

‘‘This comes at a time when our shop shelves are full but we cannot afford to feed our children,’’ she complained.

According to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), it costs a family of six about 430 dollars per month to survive -- at a time when the bankrupt government is giving all civil servants 100 dollars per month.

It has been particularly tough for professionals like teachers, declared Enock Paradzai of the militant Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ). ‘‘We all need a living wage. As professionals, we want to be treated by government as such so that we are able to buy assets like houses and cars from our salaries - like our colleagues in the southern African region.’’

Teachers form part of the millions of skilled personnel Zimbabwe has lost to other countries that have offered attractive salaries. Unions continue waging a long-running salary dispute with government.

‘‘I might just as well join the great trek to South Africa and leave behind my children because I do not know what to do,’’ said Dube, almost in tears.

Her fate highlights the challenges that fragile coalition faces as it attempts to resuscitate a moribund economy after years of poor economic planning threw millions onto the streets.

President Robert Mugabe is accused of running down what was once southern Africa’s second largest economy and forcing millions of Zimbabweans to flee as economic refugees to neighbouring countries and as far afield as New Zealand and the Americas.

Kenius Tembo used to work at a steel manufacturing firm, once one of the largest employers in Bulawayo. But he has not worked this year after his employers told him they could not afford to keep him on the payroll. ‘‘There was no warning whatsoever,’’ Tembo told IPS.

‘‘We were just called in January this year and told to stay home. We will be called back at a later date. We are still waiting for that day.’’

The retrenchments come at a time when the new administration’s finance minister, Tendai Biti, has made overtures to international financiers to support the country’s economic rescue efforts.

But economists and the country’s minister for economic planning, Elton Mangoma, say the funds that have begun trickling into the country are a far cry from the projected 10 billion dollars that the government has said is needed in the immediate term to kickstart the economic turnaround.

‘‘Without any international investors bringing their business here, workers can forget about job creation anytime soon,’’ stated Jared Phuthi, an economic analyst with a local bank. ‘‘The people need assurance about employment creation. That is the tangible with which ordinary Zimbabweans will measure the success of the ruling coalition.’’

According to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Zimbabwe's economy shrunk by 14.1 percent last year, ‘‘pushing unemployment and poverty to catastrophic levels’’.

A month ago, Nelson Chamisa, MDC spokesperson and minister of information communication technology, put starkly the inability of the coalition government to encourage investment and create employment for the country's jobless millions.

He told the media that ‘‘this is the time when we should be talking job creation and reconstruction, but unfortunately we are still negotiating power sharing’’.

While the World Bank in May announced it had given Zimbabwe a 22 million dollar grant towards the economic turnaround, the Bank still expressed concern and indicated that it was not yet ready for a full credit-line bailout.

Major donor nations eyed by Biti, like the European Union and the United States, have said they are monitoring the democratic and economic reforms before they can pour anything into the country’s economic reconstruction.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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