Friday, March 29, 2024

Zambia Sugar workers end strike with pay deal

Share

File: Some Zambia sugar shareholders plucking sugar cane during the conducted tour of the Zambia sugar factory

A strike over wages at Zambia Sugar, a unit of South Africa’s Illovo Sugar, has ended after the company awarded permanent workers a 15 percent pay rise, the sugar producer and the union said on Saturday.

Workers at the company’s Nakambala Sugar Estate south of the capital Lusaka went on strike on Tuesday demanding a 35 percent pay rise.

The company was losing 2,000 tonnes of production each day of the strike.

As part of the deal agreed on Friday, seasonal workers were granted a 12 percent wage hike, the company and the National Union of Plantation and Allied Workers (NUPAW) said in a joint statement.

“Almost all of the workers returned to work yesterday,” a company spokesman told Reuters.

Zambia Sugar expects its sugar output to increase by more than 7 percent to over 400,000 tonnes in the current 2012/2013 season.

[Reuters]

5 COMMENTS

  1. ok so burning the shit sugarcane is a good strategy to force these imperialists to cough out money. you must have been taught a good lesson.

  2. @VUVUZELA you know that burning sugar cane is part of the process of making sugar. What the reporters didnt report was that only half the people went on strike and the other half chose to keep working, Zambia Sugar offered 12% raise from the beginning, so all the striking was for an extra 3% lol, Zambians we will never learn.

  3. Those people seen in picture are thieves NOT workers.. They just embacked from the bus. Mazabuka is milked of its canes to develop some towns in South Africa. Roads to factory are impassage.. Who cared for that since the want to fill their accounts only ..

  4. WHAT HAS HAPPENED AT ZAMBIA SUGAR IN THE FEW YEARS ILLOVO HAS OPERATED THE SUGAR ESTATE IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE VERY SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS WE FIND OURSELVES IN AS ORDINARY ZAMBIAN CITIZENS AND THE NATION AS A WHOLE. ILLOVO ACQUIRED ZAMBIA SUGAR PLC AT A VERY LOW GIVE AWAY PRICE. THE AMOUNT THEY PAID TO BUY ZAMBIA SUGAR WAS RECOVERED IN PROFITS IN A MATTER OF ONE YEARS OPERATION (POOR PRIVATIZATION POLICIES). NOW ILLOVO MAKES HUGE PROFITS FROM ASSESTS THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO OWNED BY ZAMBIANS AND PAYS THE EMPLOYEES AS LITTLE AS THEY CAN AFFORD IN ORDER FOR THEM TO MAXIMIZE THEIR PROFITS…THIS IS JUST ONE EXAMPLE OF OUR GOVT POLICIES AT WORK.

Comments are closed.

Read more

Local News

Discover more from Lusaka Times-Zambia's Leading Online News Site - LusakaTimes.com

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading