AG’s Dilemna Over Prosecutors’ Strike
Harare, October 05, 2011 – The Attorney General’s Office (AG) on Tuesday
reportedly failed to draft an urgent chamber application seeking to stop a
potentially crippling work boycott by prosecutors.
Informed sources told Radio VOP that the three Deputy Attorney Generals
(DAG)’s failed to draft the urgent chamber application to file at the High
Court seeking to declare as unlawful the prosecutors strike which commenced
on Tuesday.
The AG’s office has three DAG’s namely, Prince Machaya in charge of civil
division, Florence Ziyambi in charge of criminal division and Nelson Dias,
who oversees legal drafting.
The AG’s office had resorted to legal action to stop the work boycott which
started on Tuesday. The prosecutors are protesting salary discrepancies
between them and the country’s magistrates. Magistrates who now fall under
the Judicial Service Commission earn around $700 while the prosecutors get
around $250 and yet they hold the same qualifications as magistrates.
“They (AG’s office) had no choice but to hire Mlotshwa (Gerald) to help
draft an urgent chamber application to declare the strike unlawful after
the deputy AG’s who are only in office failed to do that,” said the sources.
The Zimbabwe Law Officers Association, which represents the prosecutors, has
vowed to defy threats and intimidation targeted at them by their superiors.
Dereck Charamba, the secretary general of Zimbabwe Law Officers Association
(ZLOA) said: “They are using unqualified staff to act as prosecutors. These
bogus people have been remanding accused people. We will only go back to
work when they raise our salaries are on the same level with prosecutors,”
Charamba said.
“We recieved the same training with magistrates and we want the salaries to
be the same.”
Charamba said magistrates’ salaries were reviewed upwards in the past month
but prosecutors salaries were not reviewed which resulted in them striking.
Magistrates now fall under the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) while
prosecutors have remained under the Public Serivce Commission (PSC), a body
for all other civil servants.
Zimbabwe prosecutors once went on strike together with magistrates in 2007
when the country was still using the local dollar hit by running inflation
of over a billion.
Charamba said the prosecution department has witnessed many resignations
because of the poor salaries in the past months. He said; “Over 20
prosecutors handed their resignations in the past two months, a sign that
things are not normal.”