HANDLE CIVIL SERVANTS WITH CARE
…Improve their pathetic working conditions or else… – Mwelwa
- Salaries for majority civil servants have remained at the entry qualification despite their sweat to upgrade.
By Mast Reporter
GOVERNMENT will not contain the growing discontent among civil servants if it does not decisively address their current harsh working conditions, Dr Lawrence Mwelwa has warned.
Dr Mwelwa, a writer, entrepreneur, academician and politician, said government was digging its own grave by abusing the civil service through threats and intimidation of dismissals of workers.
He said the threats were unfair, warning that such conduct would quicken a revolution in the civil service.
“A hungry teacher cannot shape the future. A demoralised nurse cannot heal the sick. A constable drowning in debt cannot enforce justice,” Dr Mwelwa said.
He made the warning in his weekly article titled ‘Civil Servants Betrayed: The Broken Backbone of Our Nation’.
Dr Mwelwa said a broken backbone could not hold up the body.
He said what civil servants were demanding was rightly theirs.
“Civil servants are not asking for miracles. They demand what is right, recognition for their education, confirmation in their posts, protection from predatory lenders, dignity in retirement, protection from political threats and intimidation and respect for their labour,” Dr Mwelwa said.
He warned that if the government continued to deny what was rightly being demanded by the civil servants, a silent seed of rebellion was being planted in the civil service.
“Umwana ashenda atasha nyina ukunaya [a child who never travels praises his mother’s cooking as the best]. But we have travelled, we have seen and we know it can be better. Zambia must rise and restore dignity to its workers. For if we betray them, we are betraying the nation itself,” Dr Mwelwa said.
He said betraying civil servants would be betraying the core of the nation.
“Our nation stands because of civil servants like the teachers, the nurses, the police officers who protect us, and the clerks who keep our institutions alive. Yet today, these same men and women, the very backbone of Zambia, are treated as expendables, forgotten and humiliated,” he said.
He expressed worry that salaries for majority civil servants had remained at the entry qualification despite their sweat to upgrade.
“They spend sleepless nights in libraries and laboratories, burning their health for the love of knowledge. But after all this, what happens? Their salary remains stuck at that level. His sweat adds letters to his name but not a single kwacha to his payslip,” Dr Mwelwa said.
Dr Mwelwa wondered what kind of nation punishes knowledge instead of rewarding it.
“Payday is no longer a joyous moment for the workers but terror because loan sharks and predatory lenders have already eaten the salary before it reaches the worker’s hands. Payslips are not salaries anymore, but they are receipts for exploitation,” he said.
Dr Mwelwa said the suffering of a Zambian worker goes beyond retirement, too.
“After decades of service, the workers will not receive a lump sum to build a home or educate a grandchild. Instead, they will be fed with trickles, small monthly allowances, as though they cannot be trusted with their own savings. A lifetime of service ends in humiliation,” he said.
