Tuesday, September 25, 2012

(NEWZIMBABWE) Zimbabwe resumes payments to Malawi pensioners

Zimbabwe resumes payments to Malawi pensioners
23/09/2012 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE is set to resume remitting pension payments to Malawian former mine workers, the country's ambassador to Malawi has confirmed.

The remittances had been stopped due to the country’s decade-long economic recession as well as the lack of records of beneficiaries.

Ambassador Thandiwe Dumbutshena confirmed the development in Lilongwe noting that millions of Malawians played a key part in developing Zimbabwe’s economy, many of them working in the country’s mines.

“In recognition for the industriousness of Malawians and the role Malawians played in the economic growth of Zimbabwe we are committed to paying their pension,” Dumbutshena told local media.

The Zimbabwe Mining Industries Pension Fund recently visited up to eleven districts in Malawi in a bid to identify surviving mine workers.

The Fund’s public relations officer Thumani Ndlovu said they had identified at least 500 beneficiaries but the records of 200 others could not be verified because the beneficiaries had since died and there are no records.
“It becomes a challenge to identify beneficiaries because Malawi does not have a national identity system,” he said.

An official in Malawi’s Ministry of Labour, John Mawango, called on relatives of relatives of deceased former workers to obtain death certificates to enable easy processing of pensions.

At least three million Malawians are believed to have lived in Zimbabwe after many moved south during the federation of Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Malawi when the latter was used as a source of cheap labour on farms and mines.

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