Government has rebuffed the demands of Judiciary support staff to start giving them house allowances and that their conditions of service be harmonised with those of judicial officers.<\/p>\n
In a letter signed by Secretary to the Treasury, Ben Botolo, and addressed to Nyirenda Msisha and Company with a copy to Ritz Attorneys, government says it regrets to advise that it has not changed its stand on the matter.<\/p>\n
The letter, which was released on August 15, said government has no obligation to make the claimed payments.<\/p>\n
The letter says government cannot accept the demand for payment of housing allowances when there are no financial resources to cater for additional payments to the support staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny form of settlement in relation to the claim is unacceptable,\u201d states the letter.<\/p>\n
The letter further said while government is ready and willing to continue discussing the matter with a view to find a lasting solution, it cannot do so when labour has been withdrawn.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernment believes the strike is illegal and unless the employees return to work, it shall be compelled to take action within the law,\u201d states the letter.<\/p>\n
However, Andy Hariwa, spokesperson for the disgruntled support staff, refused to comment, saying they have not received the letter.<\/p>\n
Hariwa said they are yet to be briefed by their lawyers, Ritz Attorneys, since the letter is addressed to them.<\/p>\n
The members of the Judiciary support staff have been on a nationwide strike for two weeks crippling judicial services in the country.<\/p>\n
The judicial staff include court clerks, court marshals, drivers, interpreters and court reporters.<\/p>\n
Both the government and the support staff settled for renowned lawyer Mordecai Msisha as a conciliator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Government has rebuffed the demands of Judiciary support staff to start giving them house allowances and that their conditions of service be harmonised with those of judicial officers. In a letter signed by Secretary to the Treasury, Ben Botolo, and addressed to Nyirenda Msisha and Company with a copy to Ritz Attorneys, government says it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":51480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51937,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51932\/revisions\/51937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}