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Workers` strike ends,train services back
2008-04-07 09:45:38
By Austin Beyadi
Prime Minister Mizengo yesterday talked Tanzania Railways Limited workers into ending their nationwide pay strike, assuring them that they would get their outstanding balances between Wednesday and Thursday this week.
``We are now calling off the strike after the government's assurance that we will get the amounts due to us on Wednesday or Thursday this week,`` said Tanzania Railways Workers Union (Trawu) secretary general Sylvester Rwegasira.
He said soon after an audience with the PM in Dar es Salaam that he had communicated with the union`s upcountry representatives, directing them to end the strike.
He said that cargo trains would resume business immediately while passenger services would be back as usual beginning tomorrow.
``We have taken the Prime Minister by his word and we hope that the workers will indeed get their dues as promised. After all, the promise comes from a high-ranking government official,`` observed Rwegasira.
Speaking to the workers, Pinda said the government had taken over the responsibility of paying the workers their salaries from March to July this year at the recently agreed new rates.
The government would give the TRL management a 3.6bn/- loan ``to help it pay the workers the salaries at the agreed first-phase 160,000/- minimum wage rate``, he explained.
The PM added that between now and July, the workers would be getting their salaries on the 20th of each month like government workers.
The government had decided to intervene in the dispute pitting the workers against their management ``in order to diffuse this long-standing crisis because the TRL is in bad shape financially and therefore needs time to stabilise``, he noted.
He said there were indications that Railway Assets Holding Company had misled the investor (India\'s Rites Limited) into believing that the restructured Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) had 92 locomotives while it had only 55.
``The investor had asked for a loan from the World Bank but the request was rejected after the bank discovered that the information they were given about the locomotives was wrong,`` he observed.
Pinda also called on the TRL managementto stop sending locomotives to India for maintenance, noting that it was quite possible for the work to be done in Tanzania.
Turning to the workers, he said it was not proper to keep rushing into strikes whenever there were differences of opinion between them and the management.
The just-ended strike began on Thursday after the management`s failure to keep a promise to pay the workers a minimum wage of 160,000/- as agreed in a memorandum of understanding signed last month that ended a two-day nationwide strike last month.
According to a deal brokered by Infrastructure Development ministry Permanent Secretary Omar Chambo, the workers agreed to a 160,000/- minimum wage effective last month-end on condition that the amount would rise to 200,000/- from this August.
Trawu had proposed a minimum wage of 400,000/- but, following negotiations with the government and the TRL management, settled for the 160,000/- proposed in the MoU.
Following the strike, some stranded would-be passengers on Friday demanded a refund of the money they had paid as fare for the aborted trips.
However, many others complained that they had been stranded for too long and had gone so broke that they needed urgent financial assistance and alternative means of transport to reach their respective destinations safely.
The management effected some refunds but was yet to attend to requests from the latter group.
Over 90 per cent of respondents in a Saturday night popular poll run by Independent Television (ITV) said the TRL management had failed to deliver, recommending that the operations of the erstwhile TRC revert to government hands.
The government passed on the management of the giant state-owned Tanzania railways corporation (TRC) to Rites Limited last year.
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