Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
SHOCKING and actually a national disgrace and pure exploitation of the highest order. Because how otherwise could one describe the revelation that petrol attendants earn between N$240 and N$800 a month?
This is simply slavery and one cannot but conclude that petrol attendants have been the sacrificial lambs of all beneficiaries in the fuel supply chain.
The beneficiaries range from oil companies at the top that take the biggest chunk, to the worse end of the continuum, the petrol attendants.
In between you have varied instances that have been vying for a share of the pie like the dealers (petrol service station owners), the National Energy Fund (NEF), wholesalers (oil companies), Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (MVA), Ministry of Finance (fuel tax), Road Fund Administration (road user charge) and Customs and Excise.
By the 2007 figures, the dealers’ margin was only 0.43 cents. But this in no way gives the dealers the right to starve the attendants and in no way absolves them of responsibility for the starvation wages the attendants seem to be getting, and this six years down the line after the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI) 2008 study on the payment and working conditions of petrol attendants.
The study was not only damning but also unequivocal that petrol station workers are part of the country’s large number of vulnerable workers. “They endure long working hours – in many cases significantly more than the 45 ‘ordinary’ hours per week plus 10 hours of overtime as stipulated in the Labour Act. A working day of 11-15 hours are common and the requirements of overtime payment as set out in the law are often not adhered to. Service station workers enjoy few benefits and issues of health and safety are not considered adequately,” it says.
At that time wages ranged between N$300 -N$2 000 per month. Today six years down the line from the LaRRI study and if media reports are anything to go by, there has been talks of between N$240 and N$800 an obvious deterioration in the payment of petrol attendants if not in their working conditions wholesomely.
What is most disturbing is that the recommendations of the LaRRI study do not seem to have been acted upon.
One of the recommendations has been to increase the dealers’ margin, hoping that this would have a multiplier effect on the wages of the attendants. On the contrary what one is seeing today seems a regression in their wages. Whatever the profit margins of service station owners there is no way they can really justify the wages of petrol attendants.
It is really worrisome despite the plight of these fellow Namibians having been brought to the attention of the relevant authorities, and one can in this instance point a finger nowhere else than at the two government ministries, the Ministry of Mines and Energy, which has been responsible for the allocation of the shares, and the Ministry of Labour, which is responsible for industrial peace in the country. It is not clear what they have done about the recommendations of the LaRRI study, but what is abundantly clear is that six years after, there seems no peace in the oil industry as far as petrol attendants are concerned.
Not only the working conditions of these workers are highly suspect if not tantamount to “enslavement” as one attendant succinctly put it.
Much has been said about the growing gap between the so-called rich and the so-called poor in Namibia, whatever these terms may mean.
But certainly the shameful pittance given to petrol attendants as their salaries is a glaring example of the ever-growing gap between the various strata of society, with those with immediate access to the resources of the country only mindful of their own welfare and lining their own pockets, oblivious to the masses out there who most of the time are responsible for the creation of the wealth we so very much are quick to want to abrogate and amass to ourselves, and enjoy decadently.
This is while a section of those co-owning it are walloping in poverty and squalor, like the country’s petrol attendants.
Expected only to survive from the crumbs falling from the tables of their fellows.
Surely it is beyond anyone’s understanding, and humanity, to pitch up at any filling station in the wee hours of the morning hoping for the necessary help plus the accompanying courtesy, only to be re-awakened to the harsh realities of these fellows.
While they are the ones who most of the time have to bear even the brunt of dealing with some of the unruly and rowdy customers, with service station owners most of the time comfortably tucked away in their cosy homes.
It is also sad while nothing seems to have been done for six years since the LaRRI study, to hear the arrogance of officialdom and those who have been meting out such harsh realities to fellows, that their voicing their plight is “illegal”.
The plight of petrol attendants is reminiscent of a pertinent song that our political principals most of the time have been chorusing. With the popular verse of “peace, tranquillity and stability” this country has been enjoying.
More often than not our political principals have seemed to be claiming credit for such tranquillity.
Rarely have they been pausing to think that such may foremost be a factor of the many hungry stomachs going to bed every night. Thousands of many roofless people with little or no immediate hope of ever getting a roof over their heads. Hundreds if not thousands who, or their children do not have anything to wear.
Hundreds whose daily lot and that of their families have been condemned to feeding from the waste dumps. Thousands without a piece of land to call their own. Despite, these fellow citizens seem to have been dealing with their unbearable conditions in silence.
Notwithstanding, the country has been enjoying peace and tranquillity. But how long the wretched of Namibia, like our petrol attendants, shall continue to eat peace and tranquillity, none is certain – perhaps the political principals maybe.