Dozens of workers from the municipality of Maputo, mostly in the area of sanitation, held their second consecutive day of strike on Tuesday, demanding increased wages and the new Single Wage Table (TSU) of the State.
The employees gathered in the Praça da Independência, in front of the headquarters building of the Maputo municipality, maintaining the work stoppage they have been carrying out since Monday.
Following the agglomeration, the municipal authorities stationed members of the Protection Police and Municipal Police at the entrance of the Mozambican capital’s government headquarters, as a way to prevent possible disagreements.
“We will not abandon the strike until we have a satisfactory response, we have been trying to find a solution for months, but the municipality will not budge on its position,” one of the workers, who asked not to be identified, said.
Another employee said that the municipality has not updated salaries since 2019 and the situation of workers has been getting worse, because most earn about four thousand meticais (just over 57 euros).
“We work here because we have nowhere to go, we are all suffocated by the bills,” he reported.
Representatives of the strikers held a meeting with members of the municipality’s management, but the results of the meeting are not yet known.
Several professional classes of the Mozambican public administration have threatened to strike, in protest to low wages and errors in the TSU framework, presented by the Mozambican executive as an instrument for correcting salary imbalances in the state. We did not get a reaction from the management of the municipality of Maputo, but the director of Human Resources of the municipality, quoted by the daily O País, said that the capital’s authorities are unable to “pay based on the Single Wage Table.