TAZARA retirees cry foul
…we have not been paid benefits
By NATION REPORTER
THE Minister was been misinformed over our retirement terminal benefits as it was not true that 90 percent of the retirees had received their terminal benefits , Tanzania Zambia Railways Retirees Association (TAZARAA) spokesperson John Mulenga has charged.
He alleged that only a small percentage of between 20 percent to 30 percent of retirees had received while the rest had not received not even a cent.
Speaking in an interview with the Daily Nation, Mr Mulenga said that they had not yet received any of their pension benefits despite Government releasing funds to settle TAZARA retirees’ benefits.
He complained that the manner in which they have been treated and neglected by the company on the Zambian side was inhumane, because their colleagues on the Tanzanian side had all been settled
“What wrong did we do, for us not to receive our hard earned pension benefits, to a point that some colleagues are getting ill. “A number of our colleagues are getting sick, one of our colleagues who was vigorously pursuing the release of our pension benefits now has a partial stroke,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Transport and Communication Mr Brian Mushimba in response to a question, for oral answer by Kapiri Mposhi MP Stanley Kakubo on Thursday, in Parliament said only 10 percent was remaining to pay terminal benefits to retirees at the rail company as 90 percent received their benefits in December last year.
But Mr Mulenga refuted the Ministerial statement saying, “On the part of 90 percent of the TAZARA retirees have been cleared of their terminal benefits, the Minister here was misinformed because the opposite was the actual case,” he said.