Zimbabwe to announce new salaries for civil servants
By SINIKIWE MPALA
Published on: 15th July, 2009
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ZIMBABWE – HARARE – Finance Minister Tendai Biti is today expected to announce new salaries for civil servants, float grain bills to raise money for the Grain Marketing Board and gold support frameworks.
He will also soon table the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Debt Restructuring Bill that seeks to retire the central bank debt arising from various expenses the central bank incurred including use of Foreign Currency Accounts for individuals and corporates.
Responding to questions from legislators in the House of Assembly yesterday, Minister Biti said he would also announce the fate of the Zimbabwe dollar money people have either in their possession or in bank accounts.
Muzarabani South Member of House, Cde Edward Raradza (ZanuPF) asked the Minister whether or not he was aware that GMB was failing to pay for grain delivered.
In response, Minister Biti said Government had anticipated a surge in grain delivery to the parastatal around August and September and not now resulting in the grain utility being saddled with US$1,5 million in unpaid money for grain delivered to it.
He said his ministry would have wanted to avail the money this month but could not do so because they wanted to review the salaries being earned by civil servants.
“We are going to vary the amount earned by civil servants. We will give money to GMB and the only reason we can’t do it now is that we want to pay civil servants,” said Minister Biti.
“The Government will issue a paper for the support of GMB. We will issue grain bills in the sum of US$10 million at a rate of about seven percent and that will ensure that GMB will be adequately funded so that farmers will not be disadvantaged.”
GMB, said the Minister, recently got US$2 million to buy maize and had been paying about US$265 per tonne, an amount he said was far higher than what other grain merchants were paying since the liberalisation of the product.
“GMB is now a purchaser of first choice yet in our matrix it was supposed to be a buyer of last resort,” said Minister Biti.
Asked what his ministry was doing to address the issue of ghost workers that the fiscus was paying, Minister Biti said Government, through the Ministry of Public Service was auditing the civil service.
“Cabinet has agreed to make an audit of the entire civil service which is estimated to be 237 000 but there are fears that these figures should not be that high.
We issued US$100 vouchers in February and we had many uncollected vouchers because of the strictness the process had and this means some people are collecting salaries more than once,” he said.
Minister Biti delivers his midterm fiscal policy today, with members of the public expecting him to announce further reforms that would continue to improve their lives and bring the economy back on track.
People interviewed yesterday said they expected the minister to build on the progress made so far in turning around the economy.
Among some of the major issues they wanted addressed were civil servants’ salaries, stabilisation of prices of basic commodities and clarity on the education policy.
