A gold mining company operating in Bubi, Matabeleland North has been accused of ill-treating its workers who are threatened with dismissal when they present their grievances to the management.
The mine operating as DGL5 is accused of not prioritising the safety of the employees.
Speaking to CITE, on condition of anonymity the workers said they are exposed to poor working conditions and their salaries come late.
“We are using sacks to remove ore from underground and this is unsafe, we are doing what we call a convoy where we enter the mine shaft in a line and we will pass the sacks from one person to the next person,” said one worker.
Another worker said their lives have become difficult as they are not receiving their salaries on time.
“We haven’t been receiving our full salaries from September, we are only getting 60 percent of our salaries. We haven’t received our October salary and we are already in November,” he said.
The worker added: “This has been happening for months now and when we try to strike some of the workers are laid off and security will be told to not let us in. At some point, we stopped working and we were made to write letters explaining why we didn’t come to work on that particular day.”
They also revealed that there was an employee who got injured while at work but was threatened not to report the matter.
Contacted for a comment, the mine manager John Mlazi dismissed the employees’ grievances.
“Why don’t you tell them to leave the job so that we can employ other people who want to work. There are people by the gate waiting for job openings,” said Mlazi
“They are just complaining but at the end of the day they are the ones who come looking for the job because as far as I am concerned, I don’t think this company went knocking at people’s homes for them to come and work.”
