Maravi

Revise minimum wage regularly, CSPR urges govt

Revise minimum wage regularly, CSPR urges govt
By Sandra Mulowa
Wed 10 Mar. 2010, 03:50 CAT

THE Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) has urged the government to regularly revise the minimum wage to ensure that people's welfare is uplifted. CSPR executive director Patrick Mucheleka, in an interview, said the minimum wage should be revised to protect workers.

He said the cost of the basic needs was rising almost all the time hence the need to revise the minimum wage. "If you look at how much is required, there is a serious disparity. There is need to revise so that it protects the workers," he said.

The minimum wage currently stand at K268,000.
According to the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR), the Basic Needs Basket for a family of six in Lusaka currently stands at K2,696,030.

This basket includes food items such as Breakfast mealie-meal, beans, Siavonga kapenta dry fish, meat mixed cut, eggs, vegetables greens, onions, tomatoes, fresh milk, cooking oil, sugar, salt and tea leaves. Non-food items include charcoal, soap Lifebuoy, wash soap boom, jelly vaseline, electricity medium density, water and sanitation medium or fixed and housing medium density.

According to JCTR, there are additional costs such as education, health, transport and fuel costs.

Comparative wages of take-home-pay for teachers range from K1,145,300 to K1,831,600; a nurse gets between K1,221,000 and K2,874,000; a guard from a security firm gets K250,000 to K850,000; a secretary in the civil service gets between K780,000 to K1,520,127 while a farm worker gets between K5,000 and K15,000 per day. According to the Central Statistical Office, average income in urban low-cost areas between October 2004 and January 2005 stood at K645,326.

And Mucheleka also said unemployment was a very big problem and was worsening rural and urban poverty. He said there was need to come up with practical vocational trainings to equip youths.

"There is need to put meaningful and practical policies to reduce pressure to go look for employment."

He said as long as the country did not give attention to the high levels of unemployment and put projects that could advantage a lot of people, poverty levels would keep rising.

Mucheleka said despite unemployment levels being high, there had been a number of formal jobs created.

"Lately, we have seen Chinese investors coming in creating employment but the challenge is the kind of jobs. Workers are getting slave wages. That is were contradiction comes in," Mucheleka said.

"We have been calling for decent pay, most people are basically under paid. Most people are barely surviving poverty. We need to protect our nationals. It's government responsibility to protect its citizens."

And Mucheleka said there were many challenges in the informal sector, the biggest being lack of access to financing by the majority. He said people losing employment and graduates that could not find jobs created a cadre of a lot of people trying to survive.

He said some people did not have basic assets hence it was difficult to access finances and financial institutions were limited in rural areas.

He said CEEC was a good institution but benefited only those that were already in business and scaling up in business.

"The majority of Zambians we are talking about have been left out, making it difficult for people to access the money," said Mucheleka.

Labels: CSPR, MINIMUM WAGE

posted by MrK @ 6:25 AM