Civil Servants’ highest representative body, the Apex Council, this afternoon staged a demonstration in Harare Central Business District (CBD) over depreciating salaries and harsh working conditions, petitioning the ministers of Finance and Labour.
The mass action comes after a series of rescheduling of the crunch meetings with the government representatives, initially scheduled for last week but was then postponed to yesterday.
The meeting however failed to materialize prompting the labour representatives to take their grievances to the streets.
Civil servants are clamouring for the restoration of their salaries as per their October 2018 value of US$ 475, which would be determined by the prevailing interbank rate.
“What is informing our argument is that in October 2018 the least paid was at US$ 475, and now we don’t want to talk about parallel market, we talk about the interbank rate, so that if you multiply that by the prevailing inter-bank rate today we then get back to our October 1 salaries, basically that,” Apex Council spokesperson, George Mushipe said.
Civil servants want a minimum wage of ZW$ 4 000 against the minimum current earnings of ZW$ 600.
They matched to Kaguvi building were they served Public Service and Social Welfare deputy Minister, Lovemore Matuke with a petition before proceeding to Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube’s offices.
“We have received your letter and we are definitely going to look into the matters you have raised. I believe there are on-going talks and I believe they will yield positive results,” said Matuke.
The development comes at a time civil servants have rejected the ZW$ 97 salary increment by the employer which they say remains far beneath their intended target.
