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The government should work on implementing ILO Commission of Inquiry recommendations
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)
March 23, 2010

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has learnt with utter shock that the government is planning to send the Minister of Labour and Social Services to the ongoing International Labour Organisation (ILO) Governing Body meeting to project the image that the government and the ZCTU are now working cordially together.

The ZCTU views this move as immature an ill-tuned because the government is ignoring the ILO Commission of Inquiry into the trade union rights abuses that clearly outlined recommendations. The fact that we are working or not working together now is neither here nor there. The essence is that the trade union violations occurred and the matter needs to be addressed and measures put in place to ensure that such gross violations do not occur again.

In any case the progress in the working relationship between government and the ZCTU has been mundane. Trade union cadres continue being arrested, even soon after the ILO Commission of Inquiry left after its mission, we experienced some of the worst cases of trade union abuses in 2009. We had the police shooting and injuring three Shabanie Mine workers, the police disrupted ZCTU commemorations of September 13 despite a High Court order barring the police from interfering and the ZCTU President, Lovemore Matombo and four others were arrested and detained in Victoria Falls for holding a meeting with ZCTU structures and activists there, the General Secretary of GAPWUZ, Getrude Hambira has been hounded out of the country by state security agents on flimsy charges, and most recently three ZCTU staff members conducting a civic education workshop were arrested in Mutare.

Clearly we are not reading from the same page and we are not 'working' with government

Government must be forced to implement recommendations made by the Commission of Inquiry. We know the ILO, as United Nations agency, has in plane mechanisms to ensure implementation of recommendations put forward. We urge the government to acknowledge the gravity of the violations that occurred ant put into action corrective measures that will ensure that such violations do not occur again.

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