By A Correspondent- Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) workers are up in arms with their employer amid revelations that they recently threatened to down their tools when their employer failed to pay their salaries on time.

Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) is a leading media group in Zimbabwe, publishing the NewsDay, The Standard and the Zimbabwe Independent, and online broadcasting platform, Heart & Soul Radio/TV.

ZimEye has it on good authority that last month, the Independent Media organisation withdrew transport services to its employees citing it as a cost cutting measure.

The employer however promised to pay the workers by the 10th of each month.

Said a source:

“This time, they have not paid the salaries attributing the delayed payment to Stanbic bank.

They said the bank had a system error which was delaying them to send the salaries.”

Last month there were reports that Gerald Mlotshwa bought 39 per cent of AMH after the New York-based Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) exited the group as a loan client, where it had remained when Ncube was pushed out of South Africa’s leading investigative newspaper, Mail & Guardian.

Unconfirmed reports attributed this push to a failure of his ambitious digital expansion programme and an accompanying financial disaster.

ZimEye has it on good authority that last year the workers experienced the same where they had a bleak Christmas and salaries were paid late.

A worker told ZimEye, that AMH attributed the delay in payment to the company’s financial standing and accounting formalities.

“They said their year ends in March and they could not close their books of accounts before then,” said a source.

Efforts to get a comment from AMH was work in progress by the time of writing.