Zimbabwe Finance Minisiter, Tendai Biti is right and spot on civil servants

Posted on | juni 22, 2011 | No Comments

Tendai Biti

The Right Honorable Finance Minister of Zimbabwe, His Honor Tendai Biti is right with his latest stance on Civil servants in which he has basically said “Yes to Civil Servants salary increases but not before we fix what must be fixed”. The era of greedy, reckless, populist and unaccounted for spending and over spending which is the hallmark of the Mugabe and ZANU PF regime and which led us to a 10 year economic depression is over and as much as ensuring a fair and decent living wage and full pension and retirement for Civil Servants and all Workers is a core and top priority for the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, this has to happen within an honest understanding and acknowledgement of the pragmatic realities of our politico economic situation, and the resources we have at our disposal right now.

If the truth and fact is to be spoken in direct defiance to the short sighted whims of reckless populism that some seem to give in to, the Honorable Finance Minister is right and spot on when he says that before a legitimate and credible increase of Civil Servants salaries is made, the following critical preconditions must be addressed by all stakeholders to the issue:

1. Firstly, we need to establish the facts and truths about who is who amongst the Civil Servants before we can just pour money that we don’t have in the first place into a bottomless hole where more than 75 000 illegal ghost workers are getting that money. There is need to establish transparency and accountability on this issue so that taxpayers’ money is spend on the right people and not those 75 000 illegal ghost workers.

2. Transparency and accountability on the issue of diamond revenue sales must be looked into and established before any more money that we don’t have in the first place can be spend to increase Civil Servants Salaries.

Secondly, as a stop gap measure which would help to avoid punishing the innocent and hardworking Civil Servants who are not ghost workers,

1. The Minister of Public Service, Hon Prof Elifas Mukonoweshure must launch a Commission of Inquiry into the Civil Servants issue and route out ghost workers and this must yield factual and truthful information about the legitimate Civil Servants that we have and

2. Acting in the best interest of Civil Servants and the ordinary people of Zimbabwe at large, the US$98 million “Military Centre” which was recently passed by Parliament must be put on hold and those funds must be diverted towards addressing the legitimate needs and demands of the Civil Servants and the broader population at large. And that means, either the Zimbabwe Senate or MDC Senators or the Finance Minister himself can exercise their legitimate powers, authority, mandate, privilege and responsibility to veto the Military Project and divert the funds towards this more pressing and pending issue.

Finally, a more durable solution to this whole crisis is for the Civil Servants themselves to prepare to choose a new Government on the 18th of March 2012 which can address their interests best, otherwise right now, as long as a dysfunctional Coalition Government is in place with Mr Mugabe and ZANU PF constantly pulling backwards and looting diamond sales then critical issues such as this one will continue to be kicked down the road.

AUTHOR: Jones Musara
URL: http://spindocter.blogspot.com and http://zadp.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jnsmusara [at] gmail.com