Workers Will Be Celebrating Poverty On Labour Day – UPND

The opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) has called on workers countrywide to should boycott this year’s Labour Day celebrations as a way of protesting to what the Patriotic Front (PF) government has done to the country’s labour force.
In statement released to Qfm news ahead of Labour Day, UPND Chairman for Labour and Social Security Percy Chanda has observed that the country is allegedly facing abject poverty due to poor economic policies, which he says have also led to the eroding of the take home pay for workers in the country.
Mr. Chanda says it is for this reason that his party does not think it is necessary to commemorate Labour Day as workers will be actually celebrating poverty.
MR. Chanda has observed that since the ruling PF came to power workers in the country have in one way or another been allegedly punished.
he has pointed out that Miners on the Copperbelt have been punished by the abolishing of a superior pension scheme and replacing it with what he says an inferior one through the recently gazetted Statutory Instrument (SI) No 1 of 2014, which came into effect on 1stFebruary this year.
MR. Chanda notes that the SI forces all mining companies to abandon their in-house pension schemes that are much more superior compared to the inferior NAPSA scheme where an employee contributes 5 percent and the employer contributes 5 percent in contrast to the Regina Surtuna Pension Scheme which had the employee contributing 5 percent while the employer contributing 11 percent.
He says the NAPSA pension scheme is what has also led to miners being destitute after their retirement from contributing to the economy of the Nation through their sweat throughout their working life.
The UPND Chairman for Labour and Social Security adds that workers in the country have been further thrown into alleged perpetual misery by the recent increase in the pump price of fuel which she says will in turn instigate a spiral increase in prices of goods and services.
He says it is further his party’s view that workers might even be risking their lives by attending Labour Day celebrations especially if suspected to belong to the opposition as they could be attacked by PF cadres without the police allegedly not coming to their rescue.