By A Correspondent- Grain Marketing Board (GMB) workers have given the parastatal’s management a 14-day ultimatum to review their salaries which they say are no longer enough to cater to their basic needs.

According to a notice addressed to the parastatal’s management dated 16 November 2022 and signed by GMB and Silo Food Industries Worker’s Union secretary-general David Chigogo, the lowest-paid worker is earning less than ZWL$30 000 per month. Reads the notice:

The employers have disregarded the prevailing economic environment in which most goods and services are pegged in US dollars.

This has severely eroded the buying power of employees’ salaries as evidenced by the lowest-paid employee earning a basic salary of $29 111.

To make matters worse, there is no USD component to compensate for the meagre salary.
This salary has been stagnant since April 2022. How do employers expect employees to survive?

The workers also claimed that they are being made to work during weekends to distribute farming inputs under Pfumvudza and the Presidential Input Scheme.

They said:

Employees even come to work on Sundays in order to fulfil inputs distribution targets but their plea for salary review (or) payment of overtime in full and USD component has not been heard.

The management has kept on procrastinating salary reviews hiding behind their principal citing no funding but employees are saying enough is enough.

If the employers are failing to value the services of employees, we are saying it is time to put tools down.

Other parastatals have been awarded salary increments by the same principal.