Zimpapers Logo

Cde Joram Gumbo

Farirai Machivenyika Senior Reporter
Zanu-PF has accused opposition MDC-T MPs of trying to delay passage of the Labour Act Amendment Bill when they called for amendments to the Bill despite an earlier agreement to fast-track the proposed law.

Zanu-PF Chief Whip, Cde Joram Gumbo (Mberengwa West), said actions by his MDC-T counterpart Innocent Gonese (Mutare Central), to try to introduce the amendment after the Bill had passed the Committee Stage would delay its passage.

“Our objective was to curb the spree of dismissals that we’re witnessing and if we’d gone the MDC-T route, it would have taken us more time to pass the Bill,” he said.

“To us, it was a strategy to delay passage of the Bill because they would want the chaos of dismissals to continue and make the country ungovernable. We’re now fully aware of their tactics.”

Gonese denied that their actions would have delayed passage of the amendments.

“We’ve no intentions of delaying the Bill, but our proposals were meant to strengthen the Bill. The role of Parliament is to legislate and not to simply rubber-stamp and the chairperson of Committee (Cde Reuben Marumahoko) should have allowed us to present them for the minister to consider,” said Gonese.

“There is no way we can delay the Bill, but what we simply want is to strengthen it for the good of the workers,” he said.

Gonese said they wanted to make proposals for the amendment of the Bill’s clauses 4, 5 and 14.

“The clauses that we want amended include clauses 4, 5 and 14. In Clause 4 we want it amended by inserting a clause that specifically states that the common law right of an employer to unilaterally terminate a contract of employment is null and void,” he said.

“In clause 5 we want to propose that in the event of retrenchment, the employee receives one month’s salary for every year served and that in addition there be a severance pay equivalent to at least three months’ salary and relocation allowance of a month’s salary,” Gonese said.

He said they wanted clause 14 of the Bill that allows the minister to reject a collective bargaining process that he or she considered not to be in the public interest to be repealed.

“We believe this is too general and its interpretation is wide and may be abused to the detriment of workers,” he added.

After Gonese asked the Speaker of the National Assembly Advocate Jacob Mudenda to re-convene the Committee Stage so that their amendments could be considered, the Speaker ruled that the proposal contravened parliamentary procedures and that the opposition party could write to the minister and have their concerns addressed in the Senate today.

The National Assembly passed the Bill that is expected to address the plight of over 20,000 workers whose contracts of employment were terminated on notice following the Supreme Court judgment on July 17 that upheld employers’ rights to do so.

The law also seeks to ensure that normalcy and confidence return to the labour market.