State University lecturers yesterday warned of industrial action from 8 September 2019 due to economic hardships the workers are experiencing.
President of the Zimbabwe State Universities’ Union of Academics (ZISUUA), Alois Muzvuwe, in a press statement, said the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education failed to provide answers or solutions to low standards of living and hardships that are being experienced by the state universities teaching staff.
“This decision comes after realising that efforts to seek redress on state universities’ salaries have not yielded the desired outcome,” Muzvuwe said.
“All teaching staff will report for duty when the situation improves, lest they risk the embarrassment of collapsing (fainting) in front of students whilst working on empty stomachs.”
Before the industrial action decision, representatives of all state universities met with Murwira on 14 August 2019 to discuss on the lecturers’ salaries.
The government expects that workers to go on an industrial action only after exhausting other avenues including negotiations
“It was noted that the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MFED) had produced a Supplementary Budget, in which a 300% increment on commodities’ prices was noted, although there were no commensurate efforts to adjust salaries of the entire higher and tertiary sector,” Muzvuwe said.
“At this meeting, it was also noted that in spite of state universities having submitted a salary review paper through the Zimbabwe State Universities’ Negotiating Forum, with Honourable Professor Amon Murwira assuring the Negotiating Forum’s Technical Committee that the position would be considered in the July 2019 Supplementary Budget, the plight of all state universities’ workers was not addressed in that Supplementary Budget.”
Civil servants have always been threatening industrial actions against their employer as Zimbabwe’s economy continues in a rough path.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa had earlier on promised of a hard time for Zimbabweans as his administration work on a stabilisation program to correct fundamentals of the economy in the country.
Besides lecturers, other members of staff at the Midlands State University (MSU), on Wednesday this week wrote a letter to the colleges Vice Chancellor stating that they were now incapacitated and can only go to work the first three days of the month.