Zesa sweats over ‘looming’ strike

By Daniel Nemukuyu

ZESA Holdings (Private) Limited is sweating over a looming strike by its employees for failure to comply with a 2012 Collective Bargaining Agreement that provided for a pay rise.

The parastatal released a statement yesterday, saying the job action was illegal.

“The ZESA group wishes to advise stakeholders that it has received information of a threatened unlawful job action by a trade union within our sector, which has been targeted to occur over the ensuing days,” said Zesa.

“The threatened collecting job action, if it does happen, will definitely have an impact on security of power supplies. The dispute arose from a CBA that was reached in 2012 which the utility was unable to effect as a result of financial incapacity.” Zesa said non-compliance with the CBA was a result of great losses it incurred in the past six years.

“The utility posted a significant loss of $132,2 million for the year 2012,” it said. “It was and remains technically insolvent as evidenced by a net liability position $479 million as at December 2012.

“It has been on a loss making trend, with an audited accumulated loss position of $217 million in 2016, which is projected at $393 million by December 2017.” The Herald