The Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) has resolved the salary disparities between its workers in the Zambian and Tanzanian regions.
In August this year the Ministry of Labour and Social Security ordered TAZARA management to resolve the discrepancies to ensure remuneration parity between TAZARA workers on the Zambian side with their counterparts in Tanzania.
This was after the Ministry found TAZARA with a case to answer for underpaying its workers on the Zambian side by more than 80 percent thereby breaching the provisions on Section 5 of the Employment Code Act No. 3 of 2019 which prohibits discrimination in employee remuneration and compels an employer to pay employees equal wages for work of equal value.
Crews and Allied Workers Union of Zambia (CRAWUZ) President Bevis Silumbe has confirmed the development to ZANIS in Kapiri Mposhi today.
Mr Silumbe said the resolution of the matter which has been an outstanding grievance since 2014 meant that TAZARA workers on the Zambian side will now be paid at the same rate with their Tanzanian counterparts.
Currently, the lowest paid TAZARA worker on the Zambian side gets as low as K 1,900 while their counterpart in Tanzania gets an equivalent K 3,700 per month despite being bound by the same employee collective agreement.
Mr Silumbe has further disclosed that TAZARA will also implement the policy guide on the review of the exchange rate in paying workers once there was the depreciation of either currencies by more than 20 percent.
“TAZARA has been disregarding the mandatory review of workers’ salaries once there was depreciation on the two currencies of Zambia and Tanzania to ensure parity in payments ….. so this will now be implemented through this resolution,” Mr. Silumbe said.
Mr Silumbe noted that the resolution which will take effect in January 2021 will be a motivating factor for workers at TAZARA.
“ this landmark resolution entails that workers from both Zambia and Tanzania will enjoy the same working conditions and will be equally paid for work value,” Mr Silumbe said.
Mr Silumbe has since commended government and Labour Commissioner, Givens Muntengwa for providing the roadmap and facilitating the resolutions to address the matter.
And TAZARA Human Resources Manager Bright Mulambya had implored TAZARA workers to avoid persistent work stopages noting this will affect the productivity of the railway company to sustain its wage bill following the implementation of the new resolutions.
” Let’s work hard to make our own money to be self-reliant… work stoppages will have an effect on the ability of TAZARA to pay workers,” Mr. Mulambya said.
Maybe someone from Zambia sat on the payroll.
How can it be like that? In PF government everything goes nowhere.
PF must go!
We are working for the people. Resolved. We solve things and not talk about them for years like upnd cry babies
“….Zambian side gets as low as K 1,900 while their counterpart in Tanzania gets an equivalent K 3,700 per month…..”
That is how much the Kwacha has lost value against the dollar ever since PF cane to power
Your Brains are not working. Just because the PF are ineffective, does not mean they are to blame for all things. Zambia should have taken TAZARA to task years ago. This is a nation being Dwanzy situation. Okay I agree PF should have had this resolved years ago. We all know the crooks in MMD only cared about themselves.
Move out from locomotive to eletrical powered engines and shorten travelling time 200km/hr
One country is functional, the other is in ICU, what do you expect
One country has a president that has nearly eradicated corruption, and made his country the first middle income country in Africa.
The other country, has a president that has done the exact opposite to his country.
Please we are not giving prizes for guessing the correct answer above.