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Workers` strike begins at troubled TRL
2008-04-04 09:09:17
By Austin Beyadi
Tanzania Railway Limited workers began a nationwide strike yesterday following their management`s failure to pay them the 160,000/- minimum wage agreed in a memorandum of understanding signed by the two sides last month.
Crowds of furious workers booed thunderously as Labour, Employment and Youth Development minister Juma Kapuya made frantic efforts to talk them into resuming work.
They swore that they would not budge before their demands were met.
The workers said the government and the firm’s management had fed them on too many empty promises and only the payment of the new minimum wage agreed would make them resume work.
Under the MoU, the TRL management would pay the workers a minimum wage of 160,000/-, that rising 200,000/- in August this year.
The management is yet to honour the agreement, citing huge operational losses partly due to problems with decrepit facilities. The explanation has done little to impress the workers.
Prof Kapuya told the workers that the government respects the terms agreed in the MOU, which was signed after months of delicate government-backed negotiations.
He said because the workers’ demands related to a huge amount of money, the government has decided to form a commission comprising experts and officials from the ministries of Finance, Infrastructure Development, and Labour to study the matter further with two Tanzania Railway Workers Union (TRAWU) members.
The team would scrutinise TRL`s books of accounts, with a view to evaluating the firm`s accounts.
``The auditing process is going on while the government and the TRL management are looking for sources of funding to boost the company`s financial capacity, which could enable it to pay the salaries and arrears demanded,`` noted the minister.
He said the new salaries would be paid together with the additional salary arrears for last month and that the commission had seven days within which to do the assignment and report back to the government.
Responding to the minister`s remarks, TRL workers` representative Ominde John said there was completely no need to audit the firms books ``because when the management agreed to pay the 160,000/- and will have already made enough arrangements for that to be effected``.
``We don`t want to believe that the government had no idea about how much revenue the restructured Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) was generating when TRL was given 49 per cent shares. That`s why the new investors are managing the company in any way they deem fit,`` stated John.
According to a deal brokered by the Permanent Secretary in the Infrastructure Development, Omar Chambo, the workers should have been paid new salaries from the end of last month.
TRL Managing Director Narsimhaswami Jayaram signed the MOU on behalf of his firm`s management, while TRAWU Chairman Bakari Kiswala, represented the workers.
On Tuesday the TRL management suspended all passenger train services following a strike threat from the workers, fearing that would-be passengers would have been stranded like during a similar strike only recently.
TRAWU had initially proposed a 400,000/- minimum wage but that was cut to 160,000/- after negotiations involving the TRL management, the government and trade union leaders.
The TRL workers and management agreed on a staggered minimum wage increase plan early last month after the first strike disrupted the firm’s operations from the very first two days.
The strike will be a crippling blow to the recently signed agreements between Tanzania and neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, all of which are keen on using Dar es Salaam port for their import and export trade particularly following the recent post-election turmoil in Kenya.
The government handed over the management of the giant TRC to an Indian government owned firm, Rites Limited, last year.
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