A meeting between the government and civil servants in the capital Harare yesterday ended prematurely after the latter walked out of the meeting in protest. Civil servants were irked by the government’s stance that it had nothing new to offer them.
The meeting was between nine government officials and nine representatives from the Apex Council. The Apex Council represents the unions of government workers. The government’s position was that things will remain as they are.
In an interview with Newsday, Apex Council secretary David Dzatsunga said
The government had nothing to say, it had nothing to offer. In fact, they brought nothing to the table and we, therefore, decided to abort the meeting. They just told us they could call us when they have anything substantial. We walked out after about two hours, at that point we just concluded it was just pointless to continue with the meeting.
We said to government our members can no longer afford to go to work and because of the inflation and the rather punitive 2% tax (on electronic transactions), we said we can no longer afford to come to work but government says they cannot offer anything new and we really felt they are not taking this matter seriously.
We don’t have to call for a strike when it is clear that people can no longer afford to go to work, they cannot reproduce themselves. The transport costs have gone up and some services are paid for in US dollars, so how do we manage? We have told the government to be sensitive to our plight.
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