Villagers in Matobo district are disgruntled after the Matobo Research Centre allegedly forwarded names of people from outside their community to take up jobs at the institution.
The area’s traditional leader, Chief Masuku confirmed the incident to CITE and expressed concern that the conduct by the centre is unfair to the locals.
He said over 50 people are set to be employed at the centre and the interviews will be conducted from Tuesday to Thursday.
“I have been getting these complaints for some days now from the community. There are over 50 people whose names have been sent for these jobs and they are all not from our community. How do they employ people from outside? Where do they expect our locals to be employed?” Chief Masuku said.
“From what I gather these names have already been forwarded to Harare to the Public Service and they were sent without ID numbers, so that they do not reflect where the people are from. I called the Public Service and they confirmed that they received a list of names. Right now interviews are ongoing, and yet, no child from our area is part of the interviews.”
Chief Masuku said as local leadership, they are not happy with the sidelining of locals from such job opportunities because they hardly get opportunities to get employment in other provinces.
“As local leadership, we condemn such conduct. You can’t have over 50 people taken from Harare coming here. If there are to be job opportunities in their areas would they take our children there and consider them for those jobs?”
Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Clifford Matorera explained that the names of the people who were called for interviews are all from areas within the Matabeleland region.
He said some are from Bulawayo and others are from Matabeleland South provinces.
“I would like to clarify that the people being employed here are not all general hand. Some of the posts require professional and technical labour. I have gone through the list of the names that were submitted and based on their addresses, some are based in Bulawayo while some are from areas such as Gwanda and Plumtree and all of them were in the employment register and they have reference numbers,” Matorera said.
“According to the provisions of the government, it is actually encouraged to employ locals, all in the spirit of devolution. It makes more sense to employ people in areas close to where opportunities would have arisen than to get people from areas that are far away. Like in this case in point, Bulawayo, Gwanda and Plumtree are not very far from where employment opportunity arose.”
Matorera urged people who are looking for employment to register accordingly with the relevant departments so that when such opportunities arise they can benefit.
“It is important for everyone to register if they know that they need employment. Those who do not have professional qualifications can register with the National Employment Services and those who have academic qualifications can register with the Public Service Commission. It is easier for one to get opportunities when they are in the employment register because that is where people are called from,” he said.
“There is a need to have adequate awareness of such issues so that when opportunities arise people do not feel left out. First preference is always given to locals, whether it is for qualified labour or general hand.”
