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Local hotel staff cry foul over pay
2006-07-23 10:29:37
By Correspondent Nasser Kigwangallah
Local employees of high-class tourist hotels in Dar es Salaam have voiced grievances over discrepancies in emoluments, claiming that they are paid lower slaries than their foreign counterparts.
A survey conducted by the Sunday Observer has established that salary differentials between the two categories of workers were very big.
Some workers who were interviewed by this reporter during the week said the discrepancies made loal staff unhappy. and this could ultimately compromise efficiency or service delivery.
Juma Athumani, a long-time gardener at one of the hotels remarked : ’’We are being discriminated against in our own country, while foreigners are wallowing in handsome salaries and other emoluments.’’
He said those payments include fringe benefits such as houses, transport allowance, overtime payments and medical attention which were not availed to local workers who have been toiling for years for paltry wages.
One of the painful things, he pointed out, was that some local workers were more competent than foreigners who drew huge pay packages.
Earlier this week, a total of three hundred employees of Sea Cliff Hotel downed their tools demanding, among other things, better packages and a working environment, which was conducive to them.
They accused the hotel management of systematic harassment of local employees in favour of foreigners.
’’We are being beaten up by foreign chefs as if we were children and the food given to us to eat was of low quality, often left-overs,’’a striking cook at that hotel bitterly lamented.
Joachim Kwiyombe, a waiter at one of the hotels visited, said female workers suffered sexual harassments and the ones who rejected sexual advances from authorities risked summary dismissal.
He said that although they have reported to officials of the Union of Hotel and Domestic Workers (CHODAWU) so that their outstanding grievances can be addressed, nothing has been done so far.
One local employee accused some Union officials of compromising that their palms were greased to sided with the management of hotels.
The Sea Cliff Hotel Managing Director, Kelvin Stender, declined to respond to queries from some journalists on the subject.
The salary difference between local and foreign employees in many hotels in the country emerged recently after one Member of Parliament raised the issue in the ongoing National Assemvly session.
The MP wanted to know why foreigners were being paid heftly as compared to local employees whose packages were not enough to sustain them.
Answering the question, the Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Zabein Mhita, conceded that the government was aware of the problem and was looking for a permanent solution to it.
’’The government will soon convene a stakeholders meeting of Tourism Confederation of Tanzania, Hotel Association of Tanzania and Hotel and Domestic Workers Union (CHODAWU) to hammer up the difference,’’she said.
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