Govt debt of $1,3bn hampers food sourcing by the nation- Maridadi

Tafara MP James Maridadi (MDC-T) has blamed the $1,3 billion debt of the nation as the reason why the country can not adequately feed its people.

Speaking in parliament, Maridadi said one of the reasons why some people did not want to vote or did not want the Reserve Bank Debt Assumption Bill to pass is because of what is happening in the parastatals and also what happened with the mechanisation money.

"That is one of the reasons why we did not want to vote for that and I will come to the policy inconsistencies. The reason why there is hunger and Government cannot feed its people is because Government is carrying a debt of $1,3 billion internally," he said. "For that debt to be extinguished, money must be collected in taxes. For money to be collected in taxes, ZIMRA must be playing ball, but if there is corruption at ZIMRA and they are failing to collect taxes, it means Government is not able to extinguish the internal or external debt and people will go hungry. That is why I am talking about all this."

Maridadi said he was praying that the thing that will bring policy consistency to this country is one.

"Let us not have many ministries. Ministries of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment; Small and Medium Enterprises and Co-operative Development; Economic Planning and Policy Implementation - all those ministries must be disbanded and become departments in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development," he said. "When they become departments in the Ministry of Finance, it means there is one Minister. All these other people working in those departments will simply be feeding information and giving advice to the Minister. When it comes to pronouncing policies, it will be one person making policy pronouncements."

Maridadi said the reason there is policy inconsistencies is that there are many Ministers without a lot of mandates and at the end of the day, they are stepping on each other's toes.

"That is why there are policy inconsistencies because when Hon. Zhuwao was basically saying, ignore the Minister of Finance and Economic Development because he does not know anything - it is a headline which is here.  It says, "Zhuwao: investor rules unchanged, ignore Chinamasa" in a press conference," he said. "I will not bother you by getting into the details of that press conference. If he were a director in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, he would not have called for a press conference. He would have gone to the Minister to seek clarity and the Minister would have told him how the indigenisation law is interpreted and he would have gotten out of the Minister's office wiser."

Maridadi said the Minister would have made a pronouncement as one Minister. But then, there are five people talking about the same policy differently, so there is inconsistency.

"My first advice is that we must disband many ministries and come up with one Ministry of Finance and in any case, Minister Chinamasa is doing a very good job, he is a very sober Minister. He is very honest and I think he should preside over the Ministries of Small and Medium Enterprises and Youth and Indigenisation, and all those other ministries," he said.

"It is the prerogative of the President to appoint Ministers but I think the nation must play a role. When these Ministers are being employed, I think people out there must play a role as they do in other countries like what they do in Kenya."

Maridadi said the President will announce names of those that he wants to appoint and Ministers go live on television and get interviewed.

"When you interview Ministers live, you are able to tell the calibre of the person that you are engaging. What must happen is that people must have an input into the appointment of Ministers. The President must then go out and say, I want to have 15 or 20 ministries and these are the ministries," he said. "Those that are interested in the job must apply and their CVs put in the newspaper and they get interviewed by the members of the public. If they are interviewed by the members of the public Mr. Speaker, we will not have people that get into Government who are not equal to the task."