‘Chinamasa reneges on promise to reduce civil service wage bill’

By Wilbert Mukori

“We’re not going to be chasing away or sacking anyone. I don’t know where that is coming from, but if you are a ghost worker, then you are not there. You should not be receiving a salary because you are not entitled to it since you are not working. Those that are working, are not going to be sacked,” Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa assured the nation.

He was responding to the question from MDC Senator David Chimhini on how government was going to reduce its civil servant wage bill which is soaking up 85% of collected revenue reduced to a more manageable 40%.

God knows it has taken forever to get the regime to finally admit that a bloated civil service was not sustainable, especially now with the national economy in total meltdown.

Reducing the heavy burden of the bloated civil service has been on the cards for years and now it is more urgent than ever. The last 15 years have seen the national economy shrink and yet the civil service has not been reduced to match but continued to balloon instead.

The bloated civil service was not the only millstone round the nation’s economic neck, corruption has been the greatest burden to the nation, the 100 tonne stone obelisk that has crushed the nation’s economic hopes of prosperity.

Whilst former Finance Minister during the GNU, Tenda Biti (MDC 2009 to 2013) received $400 million in collected tax from Marange diamond (he complained that he was not getting all the tax due) his successor, Minister Chinamasa from Zanu PF has since admitted that tax revenue from Marange has completely dried up.

If anything tax revenue from Marange should have gone up because mining activity has increased considerable with the Russians joining in since September 2014.

The discovery of diamonds in Marange and Chiadzwa should have been the nation’s ticket out of poverty but now it has become more of a curse than a blessing because Mugabe and his cronies have cornered all the money from the sale of diamonds to finance their own nefarious selfish activities like the vote rigging of the July 2013 national elections.

Ever since Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections; the regime has covered everything in a blanket of secrecy allowing the looting and plunder in places like Marange to go into overdrive.

Marange and Chiadzwa have been completely sealed off; as far as the ordinary Zimbabwean is concerned these two might just as well be names of some craters or rocky outcrop on some planet.

But most important of all, our good-for-nothing MDC politicians have not once brought up the issue of the unaccounted for billions of dollars from Marange and Chiadzwa in parliament; they have noticed the moon and nothing else beyond it!

Senator Chimhini was bamboozled by Minister Chinamasa’s reply above, it never occurred to the Senator that this was a nonsense answer.

Yes there are tens of thousands “ghost workers” in the civil service; most of them were recruited during the GNU years right under the noses of the sleepy MDC politicians who had the majority in parliament.

Most of these workers are either CIO agents or Zanu PF party youths and most of these ghosts are away, they are the untouchables, because they are under the wings of Mugabe and his nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, the Minister of Youth and Indigenisation.

Only last week, Minister Zhuwao was assuring Zanu PF youths that none of them will ever be laid off. He warned Minister Chinamasa, it will be him who will be fired if he pushed his luck!

So, putting aside the nonsensical answer to baffle the naïve and gullible honourable MDC senator, how is Minister Chinamasa going to reduce the expenditure on civil servant wages from the 85% of collected revenue?

“It’s my hope that we will be able to do what we can do within our means to reduce the wage bill so that we can be able to remain with funds for the construction of schools, roads, clinics and other operations. This cannot be done overnight,” continued Chinamasa.

“As I earlier on said, it is my intention that we reduce the wage bill from 85 percent to 40 percent, this is a process and not an event. We know that for a long time, we will be dealing with that and I will reduce the wage bill gradually.”

I immediately got the sinking feeling when I read that; we are in this hell-hole because the regime has never acknowledged there was corruption and dealt with the problem decisively for 35 years, for example.

Instead the regime has followed a well-defined “process” of first denying the problem and thus allow it to grow and spread and the odd occasion it has acknowledged the problem it would make a big song and dance about structuring the diamond industry “to make it more transparent” as Chinamasa said in the case of the Marange diamonds.

Finally the whole issue is forgotten and the problem gets worse!

“The steps that we are going to take to reduce the wage bill are that firstly, we must ensure that our economy grows. Once there is a growth in the economy, then our wages will be a very small proportion of the bigger cake, that is the other method.

“That is the line of thinking that we are using with a view to reduce the workers wage bill. There is no mandatory issue as regards the reduction of the civil servants salaries,” said Minister Chinamasa.

We had already established that the bloated civil service constitutes a millstone round the national economy’s neck, you had agreed to reduce the wage bill from 85% of current collected revenue to 40% and now you are back to the same old argument to increase revenue but would not say how!

Minister Chinamasa expects the national economy to grow and double the revenue regardless the millstones and obelisks round its neck. We are really and truly sunk!

Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies have neither the political will nor the vision to end the country’s worsening economic meltdown and political paralysis brought on by the deadwood in MDC and factional fighting within Zanu PF itself.

The only way out is for the people to demand the implementation of all the GPA democratic reforms followed by the holding of free and fair elections.

Only a democratically elected government with a full mandate from the people and the confidence of the international community can save this nation from the catastrophic economic and political collapse we now face.