Shame Makoshori, Senior Business Reporter
THE Grain Marketing Board (GMB) has embarked on a compulsory retrenchment programme after a significant number of its workers did not respond to a voluntary retrenchment exercise announced last year.
Under retrenchment programme, which will see the State-run grain procurement establishment's headc-ount being trimmed by 2?000, the GMB said in October that it had laid off 749 workers.
The GMB last year budgeted US$6,3 million to finance the retrenchment programme.
But The Financial Gazette's Companies & Markets established this week that management had decided to embark on the forced retrenchment route, which sources said had demoralised its workers.
Sibongile Muchirahondo, the GMB's deputy general manager, human resources, wrote to workers early January informing them that a number of employees would be forced out of the company through the retrenchment exercise.
In the letter dated January 10, 2012, Muchirahondo said voluntary retrenchment had "fewer takers" and therefore the GMB was embarking on compulsory retrenchment starting January 16, 2012.
GMB is one of the 10 government companies earmarked for privatisation and commercialisation to restore viability.
The parastatal has over the years battled to pay farmers on time for grain deliveries.
As a result, many of the farmers are shunning the utility, scuttling efforts to rebuild and maintain the strategic grain reserves at desirable levels.
Over 500?000 tonnes are needed for strategic reserves.
The GMB will join several companies that have recently embarked on cost cutting measures by cutting their staff.
State-run air passenger company, Air Zimbabwe, has battled with the courts to justify plans to lay off about 400 workers after reporting a string of loses.
A government report has revealed that nearly 2?000 jobs were lost during the first half of last year, with many more people likely to have become redundant through retrenchments during the second half of 2011.
According to a bi-annual report compiled by the Ministry of Labour and Social Services, between January and June 2011, the total number of retrenchments for the year amounted to over 1?600 and the figure could have trebled by year-end.
"Statistics from the Retrenchment Board show that in the first half of the year 2011, a total of 1?663 workers were laid off from employment. This is a clear indication that the scourge of retrenchment continues to afflict the labour market as firms in the various sectors of the economy are in the process of right sizing their workforces and adjusting to operating in the multicurrency system adopted in 2009," reads the government report.
"Given the experiences of previous years, retrenchments tend to reach a peak in the second half of the year, particularly the third quarter. This implies that the number of retrenchments may well double or treble the existing total by year end."
The report stated that during the first half of the year, food processing industries and chemical manufacturers retrenched more workers due to cheap imports from the region, forcing government to effect some interventionist measures as the year progressed.
"Retrenchments in the first half of 2011 affected a cross section of the economy although they were most pronounced in the food processing as well as chemicals manufacturing and road transport sub-sectors," the report stated.
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