Civil servants to march in the new year

THE planned mass protest by civil servants – to pressure Government to take action on the Government Institutions Pension Fund’s failed Development Capital Portfolio – will take place in the new year.

Civil servants once again got together in Windhoek on Thursday afternoon to discuss the way forward after they had given in to Government pressure not to go ahead with the march before last month’s elections.Their unions – the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW), Namibia National Teachers’ Union (Nantu) and the Namibia Public Workers’ Union (Napwu) – also left them hanging when the NUNW leadership distanced itself from the planned march, stating that the timing of the march was wrong because of the elections.They decided that the march will take place next month to make sure that Government acts on their demands. Fired-up government workers demanded that NUNW president Elias Manga be disciplined for ‘turning against them’. Some of the workers at the meeting shouted that they had campaigned for Manga to become president at the NUNW congress in September and now he was not protecting their interests. The civil servants also decided to petition Napwu and Nantu leaders to address their concerns and demands of action against those responsible for the DCP failures. They said should the union leaders fail to take appropriate action, the workers might push for extraordinary congresses to oust the Napwu and Nantu general secretaries. The civil servants at the meeting also chose new committee members to organise the march. A resolution made at the NUNW congress in September called on Government to act on the DCP failure. It recommended that the entire management and the board of trustees of the GIPF be suspended to clear the way for a presidential commission of inquiry.The congress also resolved that the workers’ lost pension money must be recovered ‘from those concerned and that they must be held to account in their individual and collective capacities’.