DEEP-ROOTED problems have emerged at the country's state airline, Air Zimbabwe, where pilots have refused to resume work, two weeks after going on a job action demanding salary and wage increases.

The issue is said to mirror the state of affairs at Zimbabwe's loss-incurring state-run parastatals.

There have been growing calls for the government to privatise loss-incurring state corporations such as Air Zimbabwe, the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) and undercapitalised telecommunications company Net*One.

It appears, however, that the government, which makes key appointments to the boards of these parastatals, is reluctant to take the privatisation route, which analysts say will bring success and value to the troubled state companies.

"We are failing to meet monthly obligations and the strike by the pilots has put us in a serious crisis.... We are losing a lot of business," Air Zimbabwe's acting chief executive officer, Innocent Mavhunga, told a Zimbabwean parliamentary portfolio committee on transport and infrastructure development this week.

Air Zimbabwe plies most of the lucrative routes into and out of Zimbabwe, such as Harare-Beijing, Harare-London and Harare-Johannesburg.

The government has previously been slammed by prospective aviation players who have accused it of protectionism by denying other players licences for these lucrative routes.

The pilots also appeared before the same portfolio committee this week, where they vowed that they would not resume their duties until their concerns were addressed. "We have been very patient with our management, but the salary cuts grossly affected us.

This action is the only way we can make management understand our grievances," said a representative of the pilots.

As a result, Air Zimbabwe, according to Mavhunga, requires about $4 million to be able to pay the backdated salaries and wages that the affected pilots are demanding.

Last year, the troubled air carrier embarked on a retrenchment exercise that left several of the company's workforce jobless, while it is failing to meet a ballooning debt of more than $108 million owed to international creditors.

Although individual salaries of the pilots could not be ascertained, it is widely believed that the company owes its pilots $4 million in arrears, while they are also demanding wage increases.

As a result of the job action by the pilots, Air Zimbabwe has cancelled most of its lucrative international, regional and domestic flights.

This state of affairs is a reflection of the rot that has crept into government-run entities, where political interference, mismanagement and poor service standards are deep-rooted.

In the case of Air Zimbabwe, the company sometimes commandeers and diverts routes to enable President Robert Mugabe and other senior government officials to travel to their destinations while government officials, their friends and relatives reportedly fly for free.

It has also emerged that Air Zimbabwe is overstaffed, with more than 200 engineers employed to service a single aircraft.

The portfolio committee was also told that Air Zimbabwe's management lacks essential skills required to run a national airline with several routes.

"This is the bigger problem. Why have so many people employed when that job can be done with fewer people and because appointments to management and the board are done for political reasons, those people are not knowledgeable nor are they educated to run such a company and that's why most of the state-run companies are struggling and only surviving on government handouts," said one analyst.

The Zimbabwean government has come under fire from lending institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for its bloated civil service wage bill amid claims by government officials from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that there are ghost workers on the wage bill.

Mugabe, in an apparent bid to endear himself with government employees, has pledged to increase the basic salaries of all government workers.

This move has been resisted by Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who says this does not make economic sense.

Earlier this year, the government commercialised the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO) by disposing its majority shareholding to India's Essar Group. Essar has agreed, as part of the deal, to settle ZISCO's debt and resume operations at the big steel-making entity.

Plans are underway, however, to commercialise other loss-incurring government companies such as fixed-line phone operator TelOne, while Air Zimbabwe has also been earmarked for privatisation.

Zimbabwe has maintained a tight stranglehold on the aviation sector in Zimbabwe. Reports indicate that in a desperate bid to save the airline from losing future business volumes, Air Zimbabwe has leased aircraft and flight crew from Zambia Airways. Air Zimbabwe chairman Jonathan Kadzura confirmed the move, saying it was a stop-gap measure.