The life cycle of the third generation Decent Work Country Programme for Zimbabwe (2012 to 2015) ends this year, with little or no progress made in creating decent jobs for the millions of Zimbabweans, the majority of whom have now been turned into vendors.
BY CHRISTOPHER MAHOVE
It had been envisaged that the country would have made significant steps in reducing poverty through the creation of employment and that the impact of HIV and Aids at the workplace would have been reduced.
All these would have been made possible by upholding and strengthening dialogue among social partners — labour, business and government.
However, instead of creating decent jobs, the government has presided over the closure of many companies due to questionable policies such as the indigenisation law, plunging many Zimbabweans into poverty as they lost their jobs.
This has seen the influx of vendors in the city of Harare, where almost every pavement and open space has been turned into hawking arcades, including in uptown First Street, where desperate vendors sell all sorts of stuff, including roasted maize and chicken offals.
The informal sector, which has emerged to be the driver of the country’s economy, is reeling under the scourge of HIV and Aids, with the National Aids Council (NAC) reporting that the sector accounted for 36% of sexually transmitted cases recorded in Harare.
According to Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations national co-ordinator Elijah Mutemeri, the political and economic environment in the country has contributed immensely to the failure by the country to meet its target.
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He reckons the successes being talked about are only policies that had been put on paper with no tangible results on the ground.
“Our major priority was to create not just jobs, but decent jobs and we had agreed on how we would achieve our goals with the help of the International Labour Organisation. However, because of the volatile political situation and the battered economy, we could not meet the target,” he said.
“So far, what we are talking about, the decency is on paper. In Zimbabwe right now we can’t talk of decent jobs because we did not create any jobs in the first place. Whatever jobs we have created are menial jobs. Instead, people are being retrenched in large numbers and they are going into the informal sector where there is no decency at all.”
He said many in the sector were living from hand to mouth, barely making enough to send their children to school and meet their other needs such as health care and decent shelter, with many living in single rooms with their families.
Mutemeri said a few who were in formal employment were going for months on end without being paid their salaries and also worked under very difficult and sometimes inhumane conditions.
“The issue of decent work also includes the timely payment of salaries and allowances, but if you look at it, more than 90% of companies are not paying salaries,” he said.
“Some have gone for about 16 months, some 20 months and some even years, and once that happens, it means there is no decency at all because these people are working for free. Some are paid half of their salaries, which mean they are not meeting their day to day needs in terms of school fees, food, rentals and electricity.”
Mutemeri said these sad developments had seen some voluntarily leaving their jobs in the hope of entering into more lucrative self-sustenance ventures where they were bound to get ready cash for their day to day needs.
However, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade unions secretary-general Japhet Moyo believes there has been lack of political will among those in the government who should be driving the processes.
“The challenge has been: Do we have the political will to implement these policies,” he said.
“Obviously the political will involves people making sacrifices, people making crucial decisions, but can you make a decision when you think it is going to take away a benefit you have been enjoying. So the government has not been very straightforward, they have been dilly-dallying when it comes to making decisions because maybe the decisions would mean ministers foregoing some benefits. That has been our biggest challenge as a country.” He said the issue of job creation had been raised on several occasions at the Tripartite Negotiating Forum, where the social partners discussed the employment policy review.
“According to the report, they wanted us to take note of progress and then they listed those issues, that under the National Employment Framework, we have got the Zimbabwe United Nations Development Assistance Framework, the DCWP, the youth skills training programme, they listed those, but those are papers, they are not jobs,” Moyo said.
“There was no indication as to how many actual jobs were created with the National Employment Framework. If you go to the specifics and say maybe the youth training programme, I am not sure how many youths were trained in Mutoko and Norton; that information was not made available.”
Moyo said historical challenges had prevented the country from achieving the DWCP as Zimbabwe always came up with very good policies which were unfortunately implemented elsewhere.
“What has been bogging down the country over the years is that we have been good at talking, good at producing documents, but fell very thin on actual implementation. Even South Africans, when you want to copy what they do, they will tell you that they are implementing what they got from Zimbabwe,” he said.
Zimbabwe, Moyo noted, needed a paradigm shift and start realising that rhetoric and marathon meetings are not what the people want, but action on the ground, adding that as long as those making decisions wanted to protect their comfort zones, the country would not move forward.
“Those who are supposed to make decisions are not looking at the wider picture. The best way is to go political and say let us change the people leading these processes as a way forward. Even in the private sector, people talk about change, a manager who is not producing; who is running a company that is not doing well is changed,” Moyo said.
International Trade Union Confederation deputy secretary-general Wellington Chibebe said it was unfortunate that in most countries, the Millennium Development Goals and Decent Work Agenda programmes were a preserve of the government.
He said the processes to address decent work deficits were never participatory and, as a result, in most countries — Zimbabwe included — people were wallowing in abject poverty despite the much talked about success stories.
“Development should be about the people. Whatever, a nation does, the main aim should be to benefit ordinary people in the end. It is not about beautiful buildings and beautiful roads leaving people, especially the vulnerable, children and the youths without decent means of survival,” he said.
He said the biggest challenge for the developing world was that they were receiving development assistance with a lot of conditions, which limited their capacity to empower their own people through job creation.
“These conditions are mainly aimed at benefiting the donor instead of the people, thereby leaving most countries in a circle of poverty. Most African governments are easily tricked into accessing the so-called cheap money today without much analysis of what may become of that cheap money in relation to future behaviour of the markets,” he said.
