Burundi : employees unable to meet their basic needs according to two local labor union confederations

The CSB (Confederation of Free Labor Unions of Burundi) and the COSYBU (Confederation of Labor Unions of Burundi) deplore the current economic situation with insufficient income among workers. The two confederations ask the government to index civil servants’ salaries to the cost of living but also to enforce official prices of basic necessities.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

In a press release issued on December 20, chairpersons of the two most representative labor union organizations in Burundi, return to the deterioration of workers’ living conditions. Referring to the monthly salary of an average-level employee, they give an example : currently, a household of six people with a man and a woman who are employees as well as their four children, spends nearly three million Burundi francs per month, the food ration constituting 40 thousand francs per day.

Despite the government’s efforts to enforce prices of certain products such as sugar and beverages, the two confederations find that the purchasing power of civil servants is weakening day by day in the face of soaring prices, a situation aggravated by the fuel shortage, the longest in the small East African nation, which has just lasted almost four years.

Leaders of CSB and COSYBU regret that following an unbalanced diet, the population in general is exposed to chronic diseases while it is not even able to “get proper treatment”.

They implore the government to take measures likely to alleviate the situation by adopting strategies to combat recurring shortages of basic products.

The CSB and COSYBU call on Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye to “organize meetings with social partners on the current economic and social conditions with a view to finding a way out and to prioritize social dialogue in all policies in the sector of work”.

President Neva’s joke

Two weeks ago, the Burundian head of state gave a speech on the general crisis his country is going through that some consider “ironic”.

“I say this jokingly because I know that my children are not hungry. If they were hungry, I would not make such a speech, the mouth has enough to eat right now. God never ceases to bless Burundi”, he said on the sidelines of a meeting on strengthening the Central Bank of Burundi, in mid-December.

And he continued in a joking tone : “do you want your currency to be strong? Do like me. You know when you can harvest 400 tons of potatoes and you contemplate its production – I do my harvests in transparency, I think you see the images every day. When you have 300 tons of potatoes, you collect several notes and in addition you no longer go to the market. Can we go buy what you already have? When you count and find that in one stock there are 300 tons of potatoes, in another 50 tons of rice, in the other stock 50 tons of corn or even colcas, in addition to 500 rabbits… How could I know that there is poverty?”

The one who leads the poorest and hungriest country in the world also boasted of having several tons of fish that he raises in the province of Karusi (central-eastern Burundi) in artificial ponds. President Ndayishimiye’s slogan in a country that is sinking remains “every mouth must have something to eat and every pocket must have money.”

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unaffordable in the political capital Gitega, December 2024 (SOS Médias Burundi)