Botswana orders strikers back to work

GABORONE — Botswana has ordered striking public service workers to return to the job, rejecting their demands to reinstate fired employees and scrap a "no work no pay" policy, an official said on Wednesday.

"We are saying no to the conditions set by the unions. The strike has consequences and it is something that they knew and must accept. They must just go back to work," said Festinah Bakwena, head of the public service directorate.

She said government would not engage in further talks unless 90,000 employees end their seven-week strike.

Workers have accepted government's offer of a three percent pay rise, a fraction of the union's initial demand of 16 percent.

But unions say they will only return to work once sacked employees have been reinstated and if government drops its "no work no pay" policy that saw many strikers denied their paychecks last month.

Last month government fired more than 1,400 essential service workers including doctors and nurses who ignored a court order to return to work.

"We will only go back to work with those that we started with, so they must re-instate our comrades and do away with their policy of no work no pay," said Goretetse Kekgonegile, spokesman for the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Union.

"Since the government is saying it will not talk to us again until we go back to work, it means the strike is continuing because we are not going back."

The strike disrupted services and shut down schools and health facilities in the sparsely populated diamond-producing country.

Unions say public service workers had not received a salary increase in three years.

Botswana, the world's top diamond producer, was hard hit by the global economic crisis which resulted in a sharp decline of sales. The economy shrank by 4.9 percent in 2009 but bounced back with 7.2 percent growth in 2010.

Government employees complain their buying power is shrinking in the face of inflation that hit 8.5 percent in March.