Casualisation still rampant-ZUFIAW

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 10:08:43 +0000

CASUALISATION has remained rampant in Zambia despite the amendment to the Labour Act on casualisation, Zambia Union of Financial Institutions and Allied Workers (ZUFIAW) union president Ackim Mweemba has revealed.

Speaking in an interview in Ndola, Mr. Mweemba charged that workers in the country including those in the financial sector had continued to receive a raw deal from employers. Mr Mweemba disclosed that companies in the private sector had since improvised ways of ducking the labour instruments by engaging human resources practitioners in devising ways to topple rules created to protect employees.

“The labour movement has not achieved much in its quest to better conditions of employees in the country because the key employers keep on shifting the goal post by conducting seminars for human resources practitioners of companies to find ways to duck labour instruments Government has put in place. The amended labour laws protect the workers but companies, particularly in the private sector, have been devising ways and means to circumvent the labour laws by conducting workshops for human resources personnel,”

Mr Mweemba said. Mr Mweemba explained that the onus was on the Ministry of Labour and Social Security to employ inspectors to go door to door to ensure that people were given decent jobs. He charged that parastatal firms were leading in the agenda of casualisation as they were retraining their human resource personnel to learn how to cleverly breach labour laws. Mr Mweemba said if the abuse of workers’ rights continued, the future of the Zambian employee was certainly in jeopardy and decent retirement packages would not be received. Mr. Mweemba said the union was on top of things having achieved revision in the current piece of legislation but indicated that there were loop holes in the law.