THE number of workers complaining about poor working conditions on the Copperbelt is growing as the government tries to grapple with a uniform working conditions guideline.
The latest to complain are workers from Lafarge Cement plant in Ndola who have complained over poor salaries and claimed that their colleagues at Lafarge Cement plant in Lusaka doing similar jobs get better salaries than them.
The Lafarge complaints come shortly after workers at Electrometer Plant and several miners protested demanding improved working conditions.
The workers at the Ndola plant have since appealed to the Minister of Labour Fackson Shamenda to come to their aid because they have suffered enough.
In a statement issued in Ndola yesterday the workers complained that, their yearly salary increment ranges from K90,000 to K120,000 while their colleagues in Lusaka get more.
“Our colleagues at the Lusaka plant get better salaries than us in Ndola yet we work for the same company and doing the same job and this anomaly has not been addressed by management despite bringing the matter to their attention,” the statement said.
The statement read that most workers have worked for more than 10 years on contracts with very low gratuity of 15 percent at the end of the contract.
The concerned workers said they have continued to wallow in poverty when the company is paying foreign workers huge salaries.
The statement also stated that the managers at the Ndola plant get between K150 million and K450 million per month and K7 million as weekly allowances while their accommodation and bills are also catered for by the company.
“This is the company that is always complaining of not having money when our managers are getting huge salaries at the expense of majority workers,” the statement read.
The workers also want Christmas bonus, which was scrapped off seven years ago, to be re-instated and also the harmonisation of production packages.
[Zambia Daily Mail]
Iyee too bad!
we need our don’t kubeba promises…the paye exemption is not enough as some of us who get k3.2million per month arent bnefitting much yet we are being paid so little
where is the more money? and guy scott our parents are yet to be paid for farming when u promised payments would have been finished as of last month
I seriously doubt that expatriate managers are paid from K150 million to K450 million per month. Stop and think! This is like $31,000 to $92,000 per month or $372,000 to $1.1 million annually. Plus we are told these manager get weekly allowances of K7 million which is another $1,400 or $72,800 per year? And all this is before their accommodation allowance?
Seriously, no cement company in its right mind would pay its factory managers that much (…unless maybe you’re a Wall Street banker, forget it).
That said, this does point to a important problem for government of meeting people’s expectations. A lot of promises were made during the elections….
Just Strike, What are you waiting for..
*****s! Just go to work,at FBZ we are paid change but we do not complain endure u fools!
I don’t think its your place to call them fools, you are not in their position neither do you have inhale whatever pollutants they do due to the nature of the job.
If you think you deserve a better salary, simply resign and seek employment where you can also be paid K450,000,000 monthly!!
If those huge salaries are true then Lafarge must be making unbelievable profits on its business (which in my mind’s assessment is unlikely). There is often this speculative mentality that we have of thinking things until we believe them without pulling a shred of evidence to support the claim. I think at the core of this is the fact that there appears to be polarisation on the Zambian employment market where most locals cannot push a decent lifestyle with what they earn. We need to look at the factors causing this. It could not be a matter of better pay; it could also be support services that government is supposed to be responsible for.
How many days left now? Has the countdown stopped? Yayaya! Government intervention can only go so far.