Mr. Speaker, I can tell Hon. Members that when I gave the instruction to restructure Air Zimbabwe’s management structure, I had discovered that small as it is, with only about five aeroplanes, there were 28 Directors including the Acting CEO. That is not commensurate with the size of Air Zimbabwe. That is why we had to come up with a restructuring exercise because when you look at it, one plane is supposed to be supported by about 85 members. This would mean that Air Zimbabwe, with five aeroplanes should have only 400 employees but they were around 800. Of those, most of them were at managerial level. If you have 28 Directors and a CEO, you can see what that means. So, I want to thank the Committee because their observations were correct.
2.4 Remedies to Air Zimbabwe Wage Bill and Labour Disputes
Mr. Speaker Sir, as highlighted earlier, the number of managers is being right-sized and this will have a positive impact on the wage bill. The board has been given a mandate to ensure that performance based contracts are in place and salaries are aligned to the Corporate Governance Framework.
The Ministry notes with concern that Air Zimbabwe is over – manned given its current operations and fleet size, hence the need to retrench excess personnel. The retrenchment exercise that started in the year 2012, has been on-going though at a snail pace. The exercise could not come to fruition due to limited resources. Government is however pursuing various strategies to secure resources for the exercise.
3. Air Zimbabwe Publicity and Public Relations
The Ministry has noted with concern the limited capacity in this department. The board and management have been mandated to recruit competent personnel to run the section.
4. Air Zimbabwe Fleet
The airline is operating old equipment compared to its competitors. This has greatly increased its operating costs and compromised on service quality and reliability, thereby rendering the Airline uncompetitive. Air Zimbabwe’s current aircraft fleet status:
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