Wake up call to govt, employers

YESTERDAY’S NewsDay edition carried a very telling front page lead story titled: Headmasters confront govt over Zimdollar salaries. So telling was the article that it audaciously ripped off the façade concealing the now evidently doomed local currency.

Tired of being taken for granted by their employer, government, State-paid school heads have broken out of their shell to openly tell their paymaster that their “salaries and allowances must be entirely in hard currency so that we get value for our hard labour”.

The school heads must be applauded for mastering the guts to state their plight which, in fact, is not only afflicting them, but the entire country’s working population in both government and the private sector.

It is quite disturbing that despite it having been long established as far back as mid-last year that 70% of transactions taking place in Zimbabwe were now in hard currency, government and private sector companies are still paying in the local currency which is proving to be everyone’s worst nightmare.

If truth be told, by now hard currency transactions must be nearing 100%, which makes it quite ridiculous that workers continue to be paid in the local currency which is being viciously mauled by inflation and barely standing its own ground against other currencies.

It breaks the heart that workers are cashing hard currencies in transactions, but are being given useless Zimdollars for their sweat. It is grossly scandalous.

In fact, both government and private sector companies are exposing themselves to sabotage and all manner of thievery from their disgruntled employees because of the unfair labour practice of remunerating workers in a worthless currency. What is happening is utterly unethical.

Some researchers have highlighted that employers who underpay workers face the risk of high employee turnover, poor company culture, poor brand reputation, low morale, poor performance, low loyalty and missed opportunities to hire quality talent.

In the case of Zimbabwe, where government and private sector companies are not only underpaying workers, but giving them a lifeless currency, no one would be shocked if a survey reveals that there is grand thieving in both State institutions and private companies. Thousands, if not millions of dollars, are arguably being lost to stolen production time as workers engage in personal errands during working hours. Some workers could actually be stripping company assets and looting of resources in lieu of useless Zimdollar wages.

In schools, for example, little wonder zero pass rates are rising and lawlessness is breeding drug addicts in our children and youths because teachers and lecturers are being paid peanuts and would care less about the welfare of the students.

Government might as well stop dreaming of achieving its 3,5% economic growth rate when the drivers of that growth, the public and private sector workers, are disgruntled and feel cheated after giving their precious labour to “thankless” employers.

It is about time employers did some soul-searching, or more precisely, they should wake up and smell the coffee on the issue of Zimdollar salaries because the currency is now a serious threat to survival of many businesses.

It requires no rocket science to realise that paying workers in a dying currency is a sure recipe for disaster and the worst insult to employees who are dedicated to their work.