Kundhavi Kadiresan World Bank country director for Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe is moving on as her tenure in Zambia comes to an end.

The media was invited to chat with her a few days before her departure and for us at Commerce Gazette it was a great opportunity to get an insight as to what her impressions of Zambia are.

The Green Jobs programme focuses on human and environmental rights as well as a value chain development approach to improving the sustainable livelihoods of rural and urban families through private sector development and sustainable housing.

The main objective of the programme is to open up the job creation potential of the construction sector, taking into consideration its value chain for green building goods and services from local production of environmentally friendly building materials. 

Today, across Zambia workers continue to take centre stage on the national platform.

The escalation of walk outs and strikes, legal and illegal, have characterized labour relations.

Many workers continue to say they are unable to live on their salaries. This is despite the minimum wage review of 2012.

Among the workers that have faced this fate are employees of the South African retailer, Shoprite. About 3,000 workers who went on strike over pay were fired. Shoprite, subsequently backtracked on the sackings following the minister of Labour, Fackson Shamenda’s, intervention.

For many minimum wage workers that have gone on strike trying to persuade them enjoy what they have, given the recent wage review may seem irrational as companies have simply passed on the increase in wages to consumers. This means that the increase of prices on commodities has cancelled any gains worker got from the wage rise.

Not long after the Shoprite dispute, Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), owned by London-listed Vedanta Resources planned to lay off more than 1,500 workers. The company announced plans to retrench about 7% of its workforce of 22,000, including contractors, by March 2014 as it begins to mechanise operations.

It would take President Michael Sata to threaten to revoke the licence of KCM, before the company reconsidered its plans. In fact, KCM’s CEO Kishore Kumar, eventually left Zambia due to his unwillingness to dialogue with government over the retrenchment.

On November 8th, Shamenda was quoted as saying Kumar will never work in Zambia and he should forget about his work permit, as he will only be allowed to visit Zambia as a tourist.

It would seem corporations have all the leverage while unskilled, undereducated employees have none.

The Ministry of Labour has had its hands full trying to cope with various labour dynamics occurring in the many sectors.

Zambia’s population and labour force is young and poor. Out of a total population of 14.4 million people, the working age group of 15 years and older is estimated to be 7,837,038 slightly above half the country’s population. Out of this figure only 610,714 are in formal employment and 4,775,404 are in informal employment, according to the Central Statistical Office (CSO) 2012 preliminary Labour Force Survey Report.

To appreciate just how young Zambia’s population is, CSO reports that 45.3 percent of Zambians 14.4 million people are below 15 years and are not eligible to be employed, and of these 16.9 percent are 4 years old and below. Only 2.7 percent Zambians are 65 years and older.

Therefore what the CSO Labour Force Survey tells us is that from a population of 14.4 million less than half of the population (5,845,250) is economically active and of these 610,714 are gainfully employed.