By Zweli Martin Dlamini
Africa-Press – Eswatini. In the legal context, underpaying workers refers to an act of paying employees less than what they are legally entitled to receive for rendering services or work.
But how do we address a labour crisis where the Government is also complicit in passing laws or Gazettes that seeks to ensure that, the workers receive low wages?.
In this country we have a Government dominated by capitalists who pass laws to the detrimental of the ordinary citizens including workers.
Even King Mswati is a businessman and the purpose of venturing into business is to generate profits, that’s why we have a serious labour crisis in this country where unjust laws seeking to oppress workers are passed.
As the situation stands, we have Government Gazettes allowing private companies to pay workers as little as two thousand Rands(R2000.00), some Asians are paying emaSwati as little as eight hundred Rands(R800.00) while some are deducting provident fund without remitting to the Eswatini National Provident Fund(ENPF).
But we are not seeing these Asians and other alleged corporate thugs behind bars for violating the very same laws empowering them to underpay emaSwati and turn them into cheap labour or slaves.
It therefore advisable for Cabinet to review these Government Gazettes, Labour Minister Phila Buthelezi is a businessman and therefore, he must recuse himself during meetings seeking to deliberate wages involving the public transport sector.
Well, we have Wages Councils in this country but in my view, those Wages Councils are useless as they failed dismally to come-up with and/or recommend reasonable wages for the workers in the various industries.
But Cabinet and Parliament form part of Government if course, with all the powers to address these issues and give guidance from above.
In the textile, construction, security, hospitality, manufacturing and other industries, thousands of emaSwati wake-up everyday and report for duty but they have nothing in their pockets.
The purpose of going to work everyday is to earn a decent salary and improve your life and, if the fundamental objective behind securing a job is defeated by unjust national policies then, the job automatically becomes useless or valueless.
In conclusion, it is therefore important to state that while we speak about the process of increasing or reviewing salaries for civil servants, we must remember the workers earning peanuts in the private sector.
It’s the duty of the Government to review these Gazettes and restore the dignity of the workers whose contribution to economic growth and development remains fundamental.
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