By A Correspondent- Government is working with social partners, business and labour, on a new salary structure for workers following the erosion of wages and salaries by inflation.

Last Thursday, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Professor Paul Mavima said there are ongoing salary and wage negotiations to cushion workers from inflation.

“We would really want to see a macro-economic stability whereby salary negotiations are done once a year or even after two years. At the moment we have to constantly review salaries and wages to keep up with rising inflation.

“If we don’t do that we will be shooting ourselves in the foot as salaries and wages will be eroded by inflation,” he said.

Prof Mavima said Government and other members of the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF) were working together to address the issue of wages and salaries.

“You know the National Joint Negotiating Council reached an agreement in February this year. There was a compromise where they said Minister go ahead and set what can be considered a minimum wage and I think we have just gazetted a minimum wage for people in the unclassified sectors including domestic workers.

“So, we have to continuously review. The Government is really alive to the fact that there is ongoing erosion of wages and salaries and we need to continue to review,” he said.

Multi-tier pricing has eroded employee earnings hence the need to review the salaries and wages.

-statemedia