By ANDREW PHIRI –

WORKERS at Livingstone’s timber company, Supersonic International Limited, have protested over non-payment of salaries for 12 months.
The workers, who staged a sit-in protest yesterday, complained that top company management had since left for Lusaka and there was no communication with the workers.
A workers’ representative, Bernard Chanwa said most of the workers’ children had dropped out of school and their marriages were on a verge of collapsing due to the non-payment of salaries for about a year.
Mr Chanwa said some workers had been reduced to destitutes due to lack of accommodation, while others had received eviction notices from their landlords.
He said efforts to get in touch with top management proved futile as they had all been reported to be in Lusaka and their phones were either unreachable or went unanswered in most cases.
“We are about 80 employees here and we have engaged top management on this issue before. They promised that they would pay us our money and that was sometime last year,” Mr Chanwa said.
Mr Chanwa said the matter was reported to the Department of Labour and the Livingstone District Commissioner Omar Munsanje’s office last year but nothing had been done to date.
He said the workers were now seeking serious Government intervention because the situation had become unbearable for them.
Mr Chanwa wondered why the company was failing to pay the workers when production had continued.
“We have never stopped producing. This company has a lot of orders for school desks and office furniture which we produce and supply, the problem is we do not know where the money is going for them to fail to pay us,” Mr Chanwa said.
Efforts to speak to one of the senior managers, a Mr Mbewe proved futile as his phone was off.