Outcry among public service workers as PSC withdraws bus service

There is widespread gnashing of teeth among workers from the independent Commissions and parastatals after the Public Service Commission announced that they will no longer be allowed to board its buses starting from next month.

In a notice circulated mid June among the buses social media groups, the PSC said staff and students from the five independent commissions as well as departments and subsidiaries of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Services would be affected.

Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services bodies affected include the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, the Zimbabwe Media Commission, the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe and New Ziana.

Also affected is staff from the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC), Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC), Zimbabwe Lands Commission (ZLC), and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).

The PSC advised the affected workers to exhaust their tap card balances and surrender the tap cards to the bus conductors by June 30.

PSC secretary Dr Tsitsi Choruma was not available for a comment.

Many of the affected members expressed dismay at the development, which they say would see them failing to report for work.

The development comes at a time when public sector workers are reeling from the impact of exchange control volatility which has rendered their RTGS salary component literally unusable against galloping prices of commodities in shops around the country.

Zimbabwe’s food inflation shot up by 104 percent between May and June largely blamed on the decline in the local currency but non-food inflation rose by 49.5 percent.

Annual inflation more than doubled from 86.5 percent in May to 175.5 percent in June while overall month-on-month inflation shot up from 15.7 percent to 74.5 percent in June according to the national statistical agency, ZimStat. New Ziana