Staff Reporter

Unwarranted suspicions among members of the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF) are hindering genuine discussions meant to solve challenges facing the workforce.

This came out at the TNF Retreat meeting that took place last week in the resort town of Victoria Falls where social partners representing the Government, the business community and labour converged to discuss how the TNF could be revamped to operate to the satisfaction of everyone involved.

A source who spoke to this publication said that it came out at the retreat that lack of trust among parties involved was the main reason the TNF was limping and failing to deliver on its mandate.

“There was a TNF retreat meeting that was held in Victoria Falls last week. The meeting was attended by Government Ministers including Ministers Monica Mutsvangwa and Paul Mavhima. The labour sector was represented by Florence Taruvinga (Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union president), Cecilia Alexander (Zimbabwe Confederation of Public Sector president) and Kenias Shamuyarira (Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions secretary general) among other delegates.

What came out at the meeting was that there was no trust among the parties and this was hindering genuine negotiations regarding workers welfare. This lack of trust is causing the parties involved to fail to agree on a social contract beneficial to everyone involved,” said the source.

According to the source, the TNF members agreed that lack of trust among social partners has left partners to act in suspicion. It was also revealed during the meeting that TNF was being affected by lack of a shared value system, flaring of tempers during meetings, putting sectorial interests ahead of national interests as well as lack of respect among social partners.

The source added that the retreat concluded that TNF should deliver on its mandate and should stop unnecessary bickering. It was resolved that the TNF should establish an independent secretariat, hand over the chairmanship of the TNF to a position higher than that of a Minister and solve the disparities between wages and prices, among many other resolutions.

The TNF is a social dialogue platform that brings together Government, business and labour to negotiate key socio economic matters.