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Employers and unions reach consensus: New minimum wages to be announced soon – Noticias
2:51 CAT | 23 Aug 2021
Photo: Noticias
Employers and workers unions on Saturday reached consensus on the new minimum wages per sector to apply in the country.
Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Security, Margarida Talapa, made the announcement shortly after the end of the closed-door Extraordinary Plenary Session of the Consultative Committee on Labour (CCT).
Minister Talapa noted that the proposal would now be submitted to the Council of Ministers for the subsequent setting and announcement of the percentage adjustments by sector of activity.
The 4,390 meticais minimum wage currently in force in Mozambique was established in 2019 and holds for the agriculture, livestock, hunting and forestry sector. Since then, there has been no readjustment in response to the severe impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the national economy.
The highest minimum wage, of 12,760.18 meticais, obtains in the financial services, insurance companies and banks sector.
Minister Talapa said that the agreed minimum wages were established with a view to protecting the productive sector and productivity against the Covid-19 pandemic, the terrorist actions in the north of the country and the attacks by followers of Mariano Nhongo in the centre of the country.
“The percentage values that we will submit to the approval of the Council of Ministers are those possible and not those desired, as they are based on a very important assumption which is the maintenance of jobs, thus avoiding the consequences that unemployment creates, namely hunger, high levels of poverty, begging, abandoning our children’s schooling and other evils,” Minister Talapa said.
She instructed the CCT to prepare the ministerial diplomas as quickly as possible, so that, as soon as the Council of Ministers approves the salary increases, they can be made public.
The secretary general of the Organisation of Mozambican Workers (OTM-CS), Alexandre Munguambe, in turn, described the consensus reached as a contribution to the current challenges the country was facing.
“We are going to continue with almost the same difficulties, because, if the salary that we negotiate and agree in normal situations, and is decreed here and in the Council of Ministers, is not enough, this is worse,” Alexandre Munguambe explained.
The union leader regretted that some sectors had threatened during negotiations to reduce the size of the labour force if wage increases were substantial.
Source: Noticias
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