Why Civil Servants were not paid December salaries and bonuses

Zanu-PF should be condemned in the strongest terms for inflicting unprecedented pain and suffering on civil servants. We never imagined how far Zanu-PF could go with its cruelty. There are many social implications to civil servants. Parents will not be able to pay jan school fees. Many are dying because they cannot afford to buy drugs. Civil servants are getting eviction orders from landlords. Service providers who are owed moneys are in trouble because of default payments. Civil servants have no food on the table. They have not seen xmas and their new year will be bleak.

Zimbabweans must know the reasons for this state of affairs: the cash-strapped government is broke. Part of the money that was supposed to pay civil servants was diverted towards the first instalment of the $1.8 billion dollars arrears to the world bank( $1 billion), IMF($200m) and African Development Bank ($600m). Chinamasa made a written promise in Lima the capital of Peru in August 2015 at the world bank summer gathering to clear the arrears by April 2016. So civil servants are being sacrificed for the sake of IMF, World Bank and ADB debts. This follows pronouncements by Chinamasa in the 2014 budget statement on the need for labour market flexibility.

According to this philosophy salaries and employment are a priviledge not a right. This violates ILO conventions and standards on labour rights. Chinamasa is so naive. He hopes that the payment of arrears will unlock new money from these multilateral institutions. He does not know that the Zimbabwean crisis is larger than arrears. It is a political problem and not a technical one. It is about governance and legitimacy. So my fellow Zimbabweans Chinamasa has introduced structural adjustment (Esap 2). Zimbabwe is under an IMF staff monitored program whereby the target has been set to reduce the public service wage bill by 50 percent. The IMF carries out quarterely assessments. So far Chinamasa has scored very well and has become a protege of the IMF because of his neo-liberal policies.

He has introduced economic structural adjustment program through the back door. Chinamasa has been battling the fiscal crisis is Zimbabwe since the disputed elections of July 2013 which saw the collapse of international confidence. After the Zanu-PF contested victory the stock market crushed and lost $1 billion dollars. The economy went into deflation. GDP dropped from 7 percent in 2013 to 1.5 percent in Dec 2015.

The government is battling fiscal space. But the greatest headache for Chinamasa is the problem of party-state. This is a situation where there is a thin dividing line between party and government expenditure. In 2015 the first lady grace Mugabe went on a countrywide tour using a state helicopter clearly at the expense of the taxpayer.

To worsen the matter, the Zanu-PF conference in Vic Falls was an untimely event largely funded by treasury and so was the lavish party thrown for the aristocracy at the Blue Roof residence of the first family.

Zimbabwe's chairmanship of the African Union took a toll on the budget because the president's AU foreign trips were largely funded by the Zimbabwean tax payer since the AU is literally broke because of the collapse of Libya its greatest benefactor.

All these shenanigans have caused the plight of civil servants and left an egg on the face of president Mugabe who has been openly defied by Chinamasa on the bonus issue.

Going forward civil servants should expect more suffering and tightening of belts as we go through esap 2. The priority is to clear debt arrears and not civil servants. At this rate I predict that government will not be able at all to pay January 2016 salaries. Government is clearly stubborn but one thing for sure is that the civil service will be the eye of the 2016 storm in Zimbabwe.