Civil servants welcome pay hike deal
and that I’m sure if you read it through you will discover that there is a plea that we will continually go back to review when necessary to do such as far as performance of the economy and welfare of civil servants is concerned,” said Mr Dzatsunga.
“So in that respect we feel at the moment that’s the best that can be done. We have no complaints whatsoever as far as that is concerned as that is against the backdrop that we will continually review the conditions of service and salaries.”
He said there is need for another review in June as agreed due to the high inflationary environment.
“It was favourable enough but like I said there is scope for review in June and we have to work with that, nobody cannot argue with the fact that it’s not enough but it’s something,” he said. “We hope that if Government is sincere, if the inflationary pressures that we are seeing now are anything to go by, then there might be need for another sit down so that we can review those figures”. Zimbabwe Teachers’ Union chief executive officer Mr Sifiso Ndlovu said they were expecting a 34 percent salary hike. “Our expectation would have been if they had reached at least 34 percent then we would have neared to reality but as things turn now we still remain subdued. We mainly take solace in the fact that there was some movement but that movement was not adequate. That must be said and clearly understood by society that nobody can survive on less than 1 700 RTGS right now,” said Mr Ndlovu.
He urged Government to review salaries periodically saying the current salary increment had already been hit by the cross rating of RTGS to USD which had seen prices of basic commodities sky rocketing.
“We need to review on shorter periods than six month periods. If we wait for June it means somebody must subsidize us and who is affected, it’s the workers.
So if we take long with such a gap we are brewing obvious conflict. So there shouldn’t be too much a long time before we re-engage in order to bridge