TRUCKERS WORK STOPPAGE TO FURTHER DISRUPT SUPPLY CHAIN

BUUMBA CHIMBULU WRITES@SunZambianWORK stoppages by some truck drivers will further disrupt the supply chain which has already been affected by Covid-19 and negatively affected the Zambia’s economy which strives on the transport sector.This is according to the Zambia Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics president, Zindaba Soko.Commenting on the recent work stoppages by some truck drivers, Mr Soko stressed that these drivers were responsible for imports and exports and therefore stopping work would disrupt the supply chain.“We feel that the category of them being like domestic workers is not correct. Considering that there has been less movement this due to the COVID-19 issues, this has already affected our economy negatively.“So work stoppage will still affect our economy negatively, these driver are frontlines,” Mr Soko said in an interview.Mr Soko also emphasised the need for Government to speed up the process of changing the category of truck drivers to professional from domestic workers.He insisted that a Statutory Instrument (SI) should quickly be passed to categorise truck drivers in the professional level and not domestic.The Ministry of Labour, he said, and all the affected parties needed to go to the table to discuss and agree on time lines as opposed to truck drivers going on work stoppage.“As an institution, we are trying to supplement Governments’ efforts to see how this can be sorted out amicably as opposed to drivers going on work stoppage.“The proposals we are making is that we need to look into the plight of the drivers, even to come up with an SI to assist the category to be moved to a category they belong,” Mr Soko said.Mr Soko indicated that Zambian truck drivers were among the least paid in the Southern African and Development Community (SADC) region especially when compared to countries such as Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola and Congo among others.He therefore emphasised the need to harmonise the wages for the truck drivers in the SADC region.“As a SADC regions, it will be important to look at the angle of harmonisng the wages for these drivers because if we affect the supply chain more, Covid-19 has already done us bad and we are going to reach a stage of multiplying the problems instead of reducing them,” Mr Soko said. The Sun