ZCTU 'stay-away' begins slowly, many turn up for work

ZCTU 'stay-away' begins slowly, many turn up for work

• ZCTU calls two-day 'stay-away' this week

• Mduduzi Mathuthu: Beyond job boycotts

• Mocking 'sterile Bob' all legal, magistrate

• Mugabe vows to crush dissent

• Comoil boss arrested for 'insulting' Mugabe

By Staff Reporter

A TWO-DAY national strike called by Zimbabwe unions to press for higher pay began slowly on Tuesday, with many companies and shops heeding government warnings and opening for business.

President Robert Mugabe's government says the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) called the strike as part of a plot by the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to oust it and promised tough action on any open protests.

While there were few visible signs of increased police presence in Harare's industrial districts and restive townships, Mugabe's government put up a helicopter patrol around the city.

Journalists who drove around Harare's industrial areas early on Tuesday found many firms operating as usual, and the normal hordes of job seekers waiting outside factory gates seeking employment in an economy already in freefall.

Banks, offices and shops were also open in the capital's central business district and a journalist in Zimbabwe's second largest city of Bulawayo said many businesses there also appeared to be operating normally.

ZCTU officials were not immediately available for comment, but ZCTU President Lovemore Matombo said he hoped workers would risk open defiance to protest an economic crisis that has seen inflation surge to 1,700 percent, unemployment hit more than 80 percent and frequent shortages of food and fuel.

"We are quite aware that the Zimbabwean authorities will never treat us with kid gloves," he told SABC radio in neighbouring South Africa.

"But we are saying the suffering we are going through is even worsen than the broken bones that are likely to come our way in the next two days."

An executive at a Harare clothing factory said almost all his 50 employees had turned up for work, and one of them, Dickson Mapara, told Reuters that they feared losing their jobs in such a hard economic environment.

"I understand what the ZCTU is trying to do for us ... but things are so hard I cannot afford to lose this job, and although I get very little, I cannot afford to get nothing at all," he said as some of his colleagues shouted at a Reuters reporter to get off the premises.

The ZCTU say workers want a minimum wage of 1 million Zimbabwe dollars (2,021 pounds on the official market but worth 25 pounds on the black market) and for the government to resolve an economic meltdown and increase access to AIDS drugs.

The threatened stay-away comes as Mugabe faces international condemnation over a crackdown last month which left main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai injured and hospitalised after police stopped a banned prayer rally.

But analysts say the ZCTU's calls for strikes over labour and social issues in recent years have largely failed due to government intimidation and worker's fears of losing their jobs. - Reuters

JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com