Under a vote item innocuously headed Special Services in the vote for the President and Cabinet, Z$87, 9 trillion was allocated to the CIO, while the Ministry of Defence got a staggering $374,3 trillion and Home Affairs got $339,6 trillion.
MDC secretary general Tendai Biti said Mumbengegwi’s budget did a brilliant job for Zanu (PF)’s power retention agenda.
“In real terms, 70 percent of the budget is devoted to the army, the CIO, the police, militias and patronage in the form of high allocations to women and youth,” Biti said.
The CIO, whose finances are not subject to audit by the Comptroller or Auditor-General, also draws its resources from a slush fund hidden as an unallocated reserve under the Ministry of Finance – allocated a staggering $277,9 trillion last week.
The special services allocation falls directly under the President’s office and is also not subject to any Parliamentary scrutiny
Finance minister Samuel Mumbengegwi announced a separate equipment procurement account for special services but gave no information to Parliament on the sort of equipment the spy agency would acquire.
It is understood that government is secretly importing equipment that is being installed at monitoring centres in the capital Harare and the second city of Bulawayo, thanks to strong diplomatic and investment ties with the People’s Republic of China, which has perfected eavesdropping on the Internet.
Intelligence sources said Chinese instructors had trained 45 state security operatives and at least 10 of them have been deployed at the Mazoe Earth Satellite station outside Harare, which serves as the portal for Internet traffic in and out of Zimbabwe via satellite connectivity to Intelsat, the world’s largest commercial satellite communications services provider.
In the past, China has been credited with helping the Zimbabwe government with jamming radio signals of independent radio stations such as the United States-based Voice of America’s Studio 7 and the United Kingdom-based SW Radio Africa. – Chief Reporter
Post published in: News