Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions - zctu

World Safety and Health Day “June 6”
Acting President’s Address

Salutations

Comrades, workers, trade union leaders, distinguished guests, and fellow defenders of workers' rights. Today we gather here under a powerful and urgent theme: "Zero Harm Through Collective Action: Safe Work Today, Safe Work Tomorrow."

As workers, we reject the dangerous notion that injuries, illnesses, disabilities, and deaths at work are inevitable. There is nothing normal about a worker leaving home healthy and returning injured. There is nothing acceptable about a family losing a breadwinner because profit was placed above human safety. There is nothing inevitable about workplace accidents when hazards are known, risks are identified, and preventive measures are available.

The demand for Zero Harm is not merely a slogan. It is a workers' demand. It is a demand for dignity. It is a demand for life itself and it is also a demand for the respect of the sanctity of our precious lives.

In Zimbabwe, thousands of workers continue to face unsafe workplaces characterized by inadequate protective equipment, poor enforcement of occupational safety laws, outdated machinery, excessive working hours, understaffing, exposure to chemicals and dust, psychosocial stress, and growing insecurity of employment. Workers in mining, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, transport, and the informal economy often carry the burden of economic hardship with their health and lives.

As trade unionists, we must state clearly: there can be no decent work without safe work.

The reality is that workplace safety cannot be achieved through individual efforts alone. A single worker cannot challenge unsafe systems without collective support. A lone voice can be ignored, but the united voice of organized workers cannot be silenced. The unsafe work conditions that we continue to face demand more urgently than before a united and resilient workforce that demands the enforcement and enjoyment of Occupational Safety and Health without compromising on anything.

That is why collective action remains our strongest weapon.
Collective action means workers organizing in safety committees. It means workers reporting hazards without fear of victimization. It means unions negotiating strong occupational safety and health provisions in collective bargaining agreements. It means workers refusing dangerous work that threatens life and health. It means employers being held accountable for every preventable injury and every preventable death.

When workers are organized, workplaces become safer.
When unions are strong, injuries decline.

When workers participate in decision-making, hazards are identified and eliminated before lives are lost.

Collective action must also extend beyond the formal workplace. Millions of Zimbabweans earn a living in the informal economy, where occupational safety protection remains weak or non-existent. The right to safety belongs to every worker regardless of employment status. A street vendor, artisanal miner, domestic worker, farm worker, contract worker, or platform worker deserves the same protection as any worker in the formal sector. Statistics have shown that between January and March, 64 fatalities were experienced in the mining sector alone, while 1,236 workers sustained injuries in various economic sectors countrywide. Those are very worrying and concerning statistics of our Occupational Safety and Health environment.

We therefore call for stronger enforcement of occupational safety and health laws, increased labour inspections, meaningful worker participation in workplace safety structures, and the extension of occupational health protection to all workers, including those in the informal economy. We do trust that the proposed OHS Bill has included collaborations and synergies between the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and the National Social Security Authority(NSSA) with trade unions while carrying out the requisite company OHS inspections.

We also call upon employers to stop viewing safety as a cost. A safe workplace is an investment. Human life cannot be measured against production targets or profit margins. The cost of prevention will always be lower than the cost of injury, disability, disease, and death.

We further call upon the speedy promulgation of the Occupational Safety and Health Bill (H.B 6,2025) into law.
Comrades, The future of work is changing. Digitalization, artificial intelligence, climate change, biological hazards, and new forms of precarious employment are creating new workplace risks. The struggle for workplace safety therefore cannot remain static. Our response must evolve. We must organize, educate, mobilize, and build worker power capable of confronting both traditional and emerging hazards.

Our vision is clear: a Zimbabwe where no worker dies while trying to earn a living; where every workplace respects safety and health standards; where employers are accountable; where government institutions effectively enforce labour laws; and where every worker returns home safely at the end of every shift.

That future will not be handed to us.
It will be won through solidarity.
It will be won through organization.
It will be won through collective action.

Let us therefore leave this gathering united in our commitment to build workplaces where safety is non-negotiable, where workers' voices are heard, and where human life is valued above profit.
Safe Work Today. Safe Work Tomorrow.

An injury to one is an injury to all.

Forward with workers' unity.

Forward with occupational safety and health.

Forward with Zero Harm through Collective Action.

I thank you.

The ZCTU SG today made an intervention on Libya pertaining to ILO Convention 105 on the abolition of Forced Labour. He condemned the use of forced labour by the Libyan Government

114th INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CONFERENCE Committee on the Application of Standards LIBYA Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105) . The full speech is below:

Chair, Convention No. 105 was not adopted to protect abstract legal categories. It was adopted to protect people, and specifically to protect those who are most vulnerable when the State uses compulsory labour as a tool of control.

In Libya today, that vulnerability falls most heavily on ordinary workers. The CEACR has identified the foundational problem clearly: under the Libyan Penal Code, imprisonment expressly entails compulsory hard labour. Any provision that sends a person to prison for the peaceful expression of political or social views is therefore, simultaneously, a provision that imposes forced labour for those views. The Publications Act No. 76 of 1972, multiple Penal Code articles, and the 2022 Anti-Cybercrime Law all create exactly this consequence. The direct impact on workers is concrete. A worker who speaks out about unsafe conditions, unpaid wages, or discriminatory treatment in the workplace, and whose complaint is characterised by an employer or authority as criticism of public institutions or as damaging to the State, can be prosecuted under these provisions. If convicted, he or she faces imprisonment: which under Libyan law means compulsory hard labour. The threat alone is sufficient to silence grievances. Forced labour does not only occur inside prison walls; it occurs also in every workplace where workers are silenced by the fear of that legal consequence. In December 2022, four members of a civil society organisation were sentenced to three years in prison with hard labour for expressing secular and feminist views. The CEACR cited this case directly. These were not criminals. They were people who spoke. And the punishment for speaking, hard labour, is the same mechanism that can be deployed against any worker who raises a voice the State finds inconvenient.

We call on the Government to urgently amend the Publications Act and the relevant Penal Code provisions, and to ensure that no worker in Libya faces imprisonment with compulsory labour as a consequence of peaceful expression.

Thank you, Chair

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