Living on the rough edge of a dollar

Workers in Indian and Chinese shops have, in the past few months, staged a number of strikes, demanding their employers to revisit their working conditions. Who are these people and what kind of life do they live?EPHRAIM NYONDO writes.

At first, he refused to grant The Nation an interview. That was after four others had done the same.

Then, after five minutes, he got back, but on one condition.

“I can grant you an interview on condition that one, you don’t take my picture and two, my name doesn’t appear in the paper,” he says, while his eyes kept roving as if he were being watched.

But why?

“If my bosses realise that I gave information of our plight to the media, I might lose my job,” he continues.

And so—with fear, not courage—the story of workers in Indian and Chinese shops in the country begins.

Too much fear, wrote one South African poet Dennis Brutus, breeds misery on the land.

So it is with shop assistants in Indian and Chinese shops. They live a life that, at best, can be considered bewildering and at worst, inhumane.

“I am married with two children. The third is on the way. The eldest is 12 and in Standard Seven,” says the 39-year-old, whom we will just call John Mokhiliwa.

Escaping poverty

Mokhiliwa is a Form Four dropout who comes from Mulanje. He left his village 11 years ago for Blantyre, to escape poverty. He got a job as a shop assistant at one of the Indian shops in Limbe, Blantyre.

For all the years he has been working there, Mokhiliwa has seen his salary rise from K800 ($2) to, until the strikes weeks ago, K15 000 (about $37.50). But life, he complains, has been very tough.

“The money I have been getting is not enough even to feed my small family,” he adds.

He, currently, rents a K4 500 (about $11) house at Manje, a slum located about 10 km from Limbe, Blantyre. It is tin-potted, two bed-roomed and with a single door.

Despite living in a city that sparkles with electricity at night, Mokhiliwa, since he came to Blantyre, has never had it in his house. His wife spends about K1 000 (about $2.50) per month on water and, at least, K2 000 (about $5) on charcoal.

“That leaves us with little money for food, groceries and other necessities such as clothing for the children,” he says.

With rising commodity prices, Mokhiliwa sacrifices a lot to keep his family afloat. He walks to work. If he has a bit of money, he buys chips and he makes it a point that it does not cost him more than K200 (about $0.50). But often he misses lunch.

“Sometimes my family gets complemented by my wife’s mandasi business. But the rising cost of wheat flour and cooking oil in the past months means she is in and out of her business. It is terrible,” he adds.

When shop assistants in Limbe went to the streets mid-last month demanding shop owners to revisit their working conditions, Mokhiliwa could not hide his joy.

“The nature of our job makes it difficult to confront your bosses on salary issues. Most of them are harsh and inconsiderate. They just don’t have time to listen to us.

No job security

In the 11 years, I have worked, I have seen many being fired. There is no job security here. But I hope the strike will help resolve our issues,” he says.

Mokhiliwa might be the lucky one out because having served for 11 years and getting K15 000, he is quite a senior. But there are numerous other shop assistants who get as low as K6 500 (about $16.50) per month, according to him.

“I work for eight hours, six days in a week and yet I receive as a low as K6 500. Are we not slaves in our country?” complained another worker who did not want to be mentioned.

Strikes involving shop assistants have been common of late. They first occurred in Mzuzu, then Lilongwe followed.

This prompted Labour Minister Eunice Makangala to raise the minimum wage through a directive to K18 600 (about $46.50) from a statutory wage of K8 242, which when factored in dollars, means most of the shop assistants are living below a dollar a day.

However, lawyer Allan Muhome, who recently published a book on Labour Law in Malawi, says that despite the K18 600 does not apply across the board because it was an arrangement between the striking shop assistants and the shop owners.

“It does not change current minimum wage of K317 (80 US cents) per day which was promulgated by the Minister of Labour on May 24 2012,” he says.

The change to K317 per day, history shows, was after the devaluation of the kwacha by about 50 percent. It was K178.25 before that.

But does the K18 600 directive make any difference to families such as the Mokhiliwas?

According to the international definition of poverty seen from ‘living on less than a dollar a day’, it means with K18 600, the shop assistants will be spending K600 per day ($1.80) which is living on the rough edge of the dollar.

Cost of living

Muhome strongly argues that the current minimum wage of K317—which is less than a dollar according to the current exchange rate—is far below the cost of living for most Malawians.

“My assessment is that the minimum wage has often been set at miserably low rates and so the nation fails to attend to the plight of vulnerable workers, especially those who are unskilled.

“The concept of minimum wage will thus remains unsatisfactory to employees unless government, worker’s and employer’s organisations put up a concerted fight for the right to fair remuneration for all workers,” he argues.

Even government acknowledges this.

Speaking to striking workers at Mota-Engil Railway construction site in Mwanza last week, Makangala faulted bad labour laws that Malawi has which, she said, gives room for manipulation.

“As government, we have to concede that we have a problem on our part,” said the minister before adding: “Our laws are weak and people take advantage of that and this is the reason we find our hands tied.”

Muhome argues that there is need for compromise from government, the employer.