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MDC @ 20: Celebrating , Courage, Growth and the People’s Victories

A Party of Excellence!

The Real Change TimesMovement for Democratic Change

MDC Communications Department, Morgan Tsvangirai House, 44 Nelson Mandela Ave, Harare, Zimbabwe Issue 180

The Official Mouthpiece of the MDC

November 07 2019

This week’s disruption of the civil servants peaceful protests by the ZRP denying them the opportunity to handover their petition at the Ministry of Finance, is an indictment on the Mnangagwa administration.

It is a reflection of its lack of care, its anti-workers stance and more importantly a disregard of labour rights, the blatant dislike of the rule of law and constitutionalism.

The MDC expresses its support for the genuine and selfless demands by the civil servants for a living wage and better working conditions. Across the sectors, civil servants have had a raw deal from this illegitimate government and can barely afford to report for work.

As a party borne out of the sweat and toil of labour, we feel that our civil servants have a genuine and legitimate case.

The net effect of the demands of government workers, especially by the teachers, is that there must be restoration of their decency. Their demand for remuneration above the poverty datum line and improved working conditions is a just and legitimate demand.

Currently the education sector is in disarray with an unbearably high teacher-pupil ratio average 1:50 against a background of a teacher recruitment freeze. Rural teachers are neglected, and are forced to improvise with inadequate and archaic infrastructure. At the schools, teachers are faced with starving children and pupils dropping out en masse due to lack of funding and closure of schemes like the Basic Education Assistance Model (BEAM).

In addition to these challenges, teachers are expected to implement the new curriculum without the necessary tools to implement the same. The government has been consistent in its neglect while choosing to pay ghost workers who form part of Zanu PF’s election rigging machinery.

Education delivery is being sacrificed

for this regime’s self-preservation. Schools barely have text books, the last attempts to avail learning tools was made during the era of the inclusive government. Given the insufficiency of their current salaries, teachers and other civil servants are incapacitated, the cost of commuting to work has gone beyond their reach due to the devaluation of their wages in an economy characterised by gross mismanagement.

Fiscal and monetary blunders have resulted in a shock return to hyperinflation to a point where Mthuli Ncube had to stop ZIMSTATS from calculating annual inflation. The teachers, like other civil servants hold genuine demands and their cause does not deserve to be politicised.

In any case, the right to petition is provided in section 59 of the Constitution. The civil servants were simply supposed to be allowed to handover their petition. More fundamentally their demands must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

An administration which is incapable of delivering public goods, has no reason

being in office, the MDC restates the point that illegitimate governments have no motivation to deliver, they only owe their allegiance to repressive State apparatus.

The MDC is concerned by the current challenges bedevilling the civil service and in response to these seemingly insurmountable challenges; the MDC will ensure the following:

1. Upholding and protecting the right to collective bargaining as well as ratification and codification of all ILO Conventions on collective bargaining.

2. Upholding, and implementing the principle of social dialogue and in particular upholding and implementing ILO Convention 144 on tripartite consultation by re-constituting the tripartite negotiating forum, as an essential core of the consultative development forum.

3. Harmonisation of all labour laws.

4. A regulated working week averaging

Police brutally foil civil servants’ protest

The US$ 3 billion stolen from from the Command Agriculture programmed by the well-heeled political elite in the illegitimate Mnangagwa regime could pay the entire complement of the country’s doctors and revive Zimbabwe’s collapsed heal sector.

The MDC’s Alternative Health Minis-ter, Dr Henry Madzorera, told The Real ChangeTimes that the illegimate Mnan-gagwa regime had made an unwise de-cision to fire striking doctors for their legitimate demands for a living wage and for improved working conditions.

“The US$3 billion that disappeared without trace from the Command Ag-riculture programme could pay our

entire complement of doctors for several years. The earl losers in the long-drawn doctors saga are the millions of innocent citizens of this country who cannot afford the lux-ury of accessing treatment outside the country,” said Dr Madzorera.

The former Minister of Health, un-der whose tenure the collapsed health delivery system was resuscitated be-tween 2009 and 2013, said the doctors had genuine concerns of inadequate

salaries, antiquated and broken-down tools of the trade, not to mention the absolute scarcity of medicines and other consumables necessary for the delivery of optimum healthcare.

In a blatantly irrational and unwise deci-sion, consistent with the incompetence of the Mnangagwa regime, the gov-ernment early this week fired the doc-tors who were legitimately clamour-ing for improved working conditions.

“We urge the government to reinstate all the fired doctors, unconditionally. We further urge the government to go back to the negotiating table with the doctors, and negotiate I good faith this time,” said the people’s Health Minister.

“We call for transparency and ac-countability in the Health levy and the Aids levy and demand that the money’s be channeled to serve their specific purposes.

Dr Madzorera said government must restore dignity to the health profession without delay, urging the country’s political leaders to re-ceive health care in the country to ensure that they improve the same.

“The sacking of 77 doctors by this il-legitimate government is extremely regrettable and completely unwise. We wish to take note that the doctors were exercising their democratic and Constitutional right. They simply ex-

pressed that they were incapacitated to perform their national duty and they were fired for that legitimate expression,” Dr Madzorera said.

“These doctors will be very difficult

to replace and we urge sanity to pre-vail in this government, for once.”

In the same week that government irrationally fired the doctors, it also proscribed teachers and other civil servants from demonstrating, de-spite the express signal that they could indeed proceed with their peaceful march to express their disgruntlement over measly wag-es and poor working conditions.

Stolen funds could have revived health sector - Dr Madzorera

8 hours a day and our agenda is to restructure working hours to promote 24 hours of work in many sectors. 5. Annual paid leave.

6. Fully paid maternity leave. 7. Sick leave for all employees

8. Protection against harmful labour.

9. Freedom to join trade unions and elect representatives of their own. 10.Gender sensitive practices including protection against harassment and discrimination,

11.Ensuring all the working people are covered by health insurance.

12.The provision and the securing of the right to strike as found in the Zimbabwean Constitution as read together with ILO Conventions.

Maureen KademaungaSec for Public Service & Social Welfare

MDC Communications , Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House, 44 Nelson Mandela Ave, Harare Zimbabwe •Facebook@zimbabwemdc

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