Former Ziscosteel workers are planning to take Finance and
Economic Development minister Mthuli Ncube head-on over the Real Time Gross
Settlement (RTGS) retrenchment packages they got last month.
Ziscosteel retrenched workers in 2016 and calculated their
packages out in US dollars, but they got the pay-out on September 27, 2019 in
RTGS at the exchange rate of 1:1.
The workers’ representative Oswald Mutasa said they lost
their jobs before the introduction of the local bond currency in August 2016.
“Ziscosteel retrenched all its employees at the end of
August 2016. All the retrenchment benefits were worked out and agreed for all
the affected employees. The total monetary benefits were in the US dollar
currency. By then that was the currency in circulation. The RTGS bond notes
came into circulation in October 2016,” Mutasa said.
Government in 2017 took over payment of the former workers
and pensioners under the Ziscosteel Debt Assumption Bill, but defaulted for six
months because of the economic hardships government was facing.
The committee of retrenched workers engaged Devias Mujaya
of Mujaya and Muchona lawyers, who says the payments should be in the agreed US
dollar denomination, but is yet to take legal action against Ncube.
“Their committee approached me on the 28th of September
2019 for consultation on the way forward. I gave them a list of what I require
in order to take up their case… Currently, no paperwork has been done. The main
challenge to be mounted relates to the currency used in paying the
ex-employees. The amounts owing to them accrued during the United States Dollar
era yet when it came to payments they did it in RTGS. So it’s either they are
to be paid in United States dollars or equivalent in RTGS at the prevailing
interbank exchange rate as at the time payments were effected,” Mujaya said.
Mujaya says RTGS payments at 1:1 for the retrenched workers
were not viable given the way RTGS value has been eroded.
“It’s not feasible because we can’t have a situation
whereby there is a law which says 1:1 yet there is an interbank exchange rate
between the two currencies which clearly shows that they are not at par. Taking
the two currencies as being at par is a fallacy and it only serves to prejudice
the suffering ex-employees,” Majaya said.
In early 2019, Ncube liberalised the market and the bond
note floated at 1:1, but when the RTGS dollar was introduced as a currency in
June 2019, it was at an exchange rate of 1:3 which has since changed to 14 and
later 18 on the parallel market. Newsday
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