“You'll Be Fired if You Refuse” - Human Rights Watch

50,000, 100,000 Kwacha to not report an accident. And because of the pay,
because of the peanuts we receive [as salary], people do this. Sometimes it
doesn’t even take money. After a small accident, in which [the injury is
minor], the Chinese boss will say, “I’ll give you three days off, don’t report
to work,” in exchange for not reporting the accident [to a safety officer or
the MSD]. We’re all so tired with our hours and our pay, it’s easy. The MSD
isn’t going to improve our situation anyway. 200
Human Rights Watch spoke with six workers who had received bribes to not report
accidents—each of whom mentioned others in their work groups who had done similarly—
and all mentioned their low salaries as influencing their decision to accept a bribe.
At times, rather than bribing workers, bosses resort to threats and intimidation. This
appears to occur most often when a Zambian boss, perhaps not authorized to pay out a
bribe, feels concerned about his own job safety, as demonstrated in a case described by a
miner at NFCA in 2011:
I was in an accident not long ago. I was working the afternoon shift, I came
out from underground around 10:40 p.m. … I was forced by the [Zambian]
shift boss at 10:55 p.m. to go back underground for the night shift [because
the replacement hadn’t reported]. He said that if I didn’t go, I would be
terminated…. I was working and [details of an accident that resulted in
injury omitted]…. This was never reported to the safety people, because I
was told that if I reported it, I’d be fired for negligence. My boss was afraid
for his own job. He’d sent me back down for the night shift without telling
the Chinese. And so if the accident had looked to be his fault, he might be
fired. So he threatened me instead, saying that it would be marked as
negligence and I’d lose my job if I reported it…. So up until today, I haven’t
been able to get treatment. I have big pain. It’s not okay. 201
One result is that there may be a large number of accidents unreported to the
government’s Mines Safety Department, which in turn does not investigate whether
breaches of safety regulations led to accidents. Bright Kateka, deputy chief inspector in
the Mines Safety Department, acknowledged the problem, though not specifically about
the Chinese-run operations:
200 Human Rights Watch interview with underground artisan fitter B at NFCA, Chambishi, July 16, 2011.
201 Human Rights Watch interview with mine truck operator B at NFCA, Chambishi, July 16, 2011. Details of this account have
been omitted to protect the worker from reprisal.
65 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | NOVEMBER 2011