STRIKING workers at TAZARA in Kapiri Mposhi on Tuesday afternoon ran amok and stoned a moving passenger train.
The workers were demanding that locomotive drivers and other crew members should not move the train until the company’s management pays them their three months salary arrears.
As the Dar-es-Salaam bound passenger train was about to start off from Kapiri Mposhi at 16:00 hours, the workers who staged a sit-in protest last Thursday, mobilised at the platform and demanded that no TAZARA employee should be allowed to move the train.
Management had to engage Zambia Police officers and union leaders to calm the striking workers.
Later, locomotive drivers and other crew members managed to move the train.
Union leaders at TAZARA last month formally contacted transport and communications minister Brian Mushimba, demanding to meet him to discuss the challenges facing the railway company, among them perennial delayed salaries and the impending concessioning of TAZARA.
The union leaders’ first attempt to meet Mushimba failed because he was in President Edgar Lungu’s advance party during the recent SADC meeting in Namibia.
Mushimba is also part of the delegation of ministers that travelled to Beijing for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit.
TAZARA labour leaders have indicated that they want to meet the minister immediately he returns from China.