Biti warns foreign trips may gobble US$50m

By Guthrie Munyuki, Deputy News Editor

HARARE – Finance Minister Tendai Biti has warned that foreign trips – including President Robert Mugabe’s to Asia as well as ministers’ travel jaunts – may blow up to US$50 million this year if they are not curbed.

“The situation is out of hand. It’s alarming. It’s frightening.  It’s criminal that you can spend $12,5 million on travelling and you can’t put that money either into health or education.

“At this rate, the $28 million which was spent last year on foreign travels could be easily surpassed.  The travel expenses could reach $50 million by end of the year,” an exasperated Biti said yesterday.

Since the beginning of this year, Mugabe’s private and medical excursions to the Far East have gobbled an estimated $12 million, while millions more have been spent in other nondescript travels by ministers.

Mugabe is due to chew millions more US dollars tomorrow when he leaves for Italy to attend the Food and Agriculture Organization summit in Rome. According to presidential spokesman George Charamba, Mugabe is expected home from yet another trip to Asia tomorrow morning, and will be back in the air hours later, heading for Europe.

Questioned about Mugabe’s travel expenditures at the presentation of the state of the economy yesterday, Biti said the cost of foreign trips was distressing.

“I don’t know why you are asking a political question instead of an economic question because I am the Minister of Finance. Of course, government trips include the President’s trips; he is part of the government,” he said.

Biti said what was more disquieting about these foreign trips was that nothing tangible had come from them, even though they were gobbling enormous amounts of money from the treasury.

He also bemoaned the lack of transparency that characterized many of the travel jaunts. But Biti’s “we eat what we gather” policy, which encompasses austerity measures and huge cuts in spending, is clearly falling on deaf ears.

Since January, Mugabe, dogged by age and persistent rumours of ill health, including that of his wife Grace lately, has travelled five times to Singapore on medical grounds.

Weekend reports claimed that the octogenarian had on each of his Asian jaunts requested US$3 million for travel expenses. The excursions, which often see the president commandeering Air Zimbabwe planes, include an army of aides and bodyguards.

Recently, striking pilots were compelled to come back to work and fly him to Singapore. The money that Mugabe and his entourage receive from the treasury is mainly for accommodation, allowances for the travelling party and an emergency kitty.

Biti said government’s wage bill had become astronomically high compared to other SADC countries, and this was worrisome. “Total employment costs during the first quarter amounted to US$248,6 million, accounting for 48% of the total recurrent expenditures.

“More appalling is the fact that, despite this high wage bill, individual salary levels in the civil service are pathetic. The civil service audit that was sanctioned by government in 2009 has revealed rampant existence of ghost workers,” he said. “However, there has been slow movement in rectifying the anomalies and the nation continues to suffer as a result.

“Clearly, eliminating these ghost workers remains the only avenue, not only to stop the haemorrhaging of the fiscus, but also to competitively reward genuine civil servants. Government should therefore, move with speed on this issue.”

Biti said the civil servants audit revealed that at least 75 000 jobs were questionable and 13 500 of these were definite ghost workers who remained on the government payroll.

Public Service Minister Elphas Mukonoweshuro has handed over the report to cabinet which is yet to make a decision on the matter, which has attracted widespread condemnation.

Government could be losing as much as US$11 million every month to ghost workers at a time when the majority of the civil servants are earning peanuts. On average, depending on the grade, civil servants earn between US$240 and US$520 a month.

Civil servants have warned that they could strike if government does not improve their salaries, which are well below the US$520 poverty datum line. Mugabe has repeatedly promised them increments based on diamond revenues, which Biti said yesterday were surrounded by a veil of secrecy.

“As it is, we are going to have a shortfall of US$150 million by the end of the year. I don’t know where I am going to get the money, but it has to be found. We can only improve the salaries of the civil servants when we are able to create jobs, attract foreign investment and have transparency,” he said. Daily News