Lilongwe – Malawi staff at the Zimbabwean embassy have complained of abuses, alleging that they have not been paid their salaries since December last year, a report said on Monday.
According to Nyasa Times, the workers wrote an anonymous letter to the Malawian government asking for interventions.
The workers alleged that they were not allowed to complain, because senior officials at the Zimbabwean embassy threatened them with dismissals when they spoke up about the issue.
The workers further claimed that they had not been paid for the past five months.
However, the Malawian foreign affairs spokesperson, Rejoice Shumba said it would be difficult for the Malawian government to intervene because embassies had their own standing labour laws.
A previous News 24 report revealed that the broke Zimbabwean government was struggling to pay rentals, salaries for staff in most of its embassies across the world for well over a year.
At least 10 embassies were facing imminent closure, as rental payments had not been made, the report said.
According to a NewsDay report in June last year, the Zimbabwean government owed staff at various embassies about $10 million in salary arrears.
At the time, Finance and Economic Development secretary Willard Manungo disclosed that the government was two months behind in salary payments of foreign embassies at Zimbabwe’s 43 diplomatic missions.
“The problem is we disburse salaries for foreign embassies directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their diplomatic missions, but we are now considering having everyone under the Salary Services Bureau so that we have a situation whereby all employment costs for domestic and foreign missions are processed from one point,” Manungo was quoted saying at the time.
