Parliamentary committee backs Chinamasa on civil servants retrenchments

The Parliamentary Committee on Budget, Finance and Economic Development has come out in full support of Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa over his budget statement that government will effect cost cutting measures on the civil service which will include retrenchments, salary cuts and suspension of bonuses.

Speaking at a 2017 budget consultation meeting in Gwanda yesterday, portfolio committee chairman David Champfika said that as far as his committee knows Minister Chinamasa expressed the government policy exactly as was agreed on by the portfolio committee and cabinet.

Champfika was responding to a motion presented by the residents that the committee should move for the Minister's dismissal after Information and Broadcasting Services Minister Chris Mushowe issued a media statement that Chinamasa had presented the incorrect government position regarding the civil service.

Champfika said that what Mushowe was saying was news to their committee which they also saw in the media and will not take it serious as Chinamasa's position is the standing government policy regarding the matter.

"We don't work by what the media says but with what we agree on as parliament and cabinet," he said.

"If Minister Mushowe has any feelings contrary to the policy which we agreed on he is free as a parliamentarian to present his debate to parliament in the house and consideration to his debate will be made, but for now as a committee what we know to be standing and government policy is what the Minister of Finance delivered in Parliament," he said.