Stanbic Bank workers Monday staged a demonstration at the financial institution’s headquarters in Harare complaining of poor working conditions and low salaries.
More than 100 placard-carrying Stanbic employees thronged the bank’s headquarters along Samora Machel Avenue singing revolutionary songs and demanding improved working conditions and a pay hike.
One of the demonstrators and general secretary of the Zimbabwe Bankers and Allied Workers Union (ZIBAWU), Gift Peter Mutasa, said the bank’s treatment of its workers, post-independence, was tantamount to slavery.
Mutasa said negotiations with the bank’s management have yielded nothing.
Zibawu president Farai Katsande, who addressed the protestors, said Stanbic Bank was paying paltry salaries to its employees yet some senior bank managers are living large.
What angers the workers the most, according to Katsande, is that the bank reported an $18 million profit at the end of its financial year but its employees have nothing to show for it.
Meanwhile, Katsande urged the banking public to shun the financial institution until the bank meets the demands of its workers.
Some of the placards read: “No To Exploitation”.
Studio 7 failed to get a comment from the bank’s management.
In other news, a statement released by Delta Belverages and BAT, says there has been a 10 percent and 16 percent drop in the sales of alcohol and cigarettes respectively in the first half of this year.
The two companies attributed this to the liquidity crisis affecting the nation. This comes at a time when former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told reporters last week that more than 700 companies have closed shop since last year’s disputed elections.
Efforts to get a comment from Industry Minister Joey Bimha were fruitless.
He is reportedly accompanying President Robert Mugabe in China where the head of state and his delegation are looking for new lines of credit to help revive the country’s ailing economy.