“Employment costs is a problem we cannot continue to postpone. We will grapple with it in the new year,” he said. The civil service ballooned from 315,000 in 2009 to about 554,000 in 2014.
Of the $4.1 billion 2015 national budget $3.32 billion (81 percent) goes to employments costs while only $798 million is available for operations, debt servicing and capital development.
Labour activists and economists have described the intention to retrench as “ill-advised”.
Japhet Moyo, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) secretary general, told The Zimbabwean that while cutting the wage bill was a noble idea, government did not have the capacity to fund the process.
“It would seem government wants to lay off workers without compensation, because it is clear that there is no money to give to the affected civil servants. You don’t just wake up in the morning and decide to retrench because a huge amount of resources are needed to do so,” he said.
Moyo accused Chinamasa and government of attempting to renege on a tripartite agreement on labour reform that recommended that loss-making parastatals such as Air Zimbabwe, the National Railways of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply authority be rationalised first.
He said the plan to retrench civil servants showed a lack of proper prioritisation given that the public sector was stuffed with ghost workers.
“There are thousands of ghost workers and undeserving Zanu (PF) activists inflating the wage bill. These are the ones that government must look at first before talking of bona fide public employees. There is a lot of hypocrisy in this whole thing,” added Moyo.
Since the dissolution of the 2009-2013 Government of National Unity (GNU), President Robert Mugabe’s cabinet has been struggling to pay civil servants, who are yet to receive their annual bonuses for last year.
The liquidity crunch has severely affected all public bodies, with security service departments like the army adopting unusual measures such as sending soldiers on leave to lessen expenditure.
Moyo doubted if government had correct figures of its employees and a strategy of how to identify those that would be retrenched but admitted that the civil workforce was full of unproductive employees.
Mugabe’s medical and holiday trips to the far East with huge entourages have gobbled millions of dollars which could be saved for crucial government programmes, said economist John Robertson.
“There is too much expenditure that government can ill afford. These people are still talking about compensating war veterans and their dependants yet, in a clear contradiction they want to retrench civil servants. Government is far too generous with its top employees,” he said.
Robertson urged government to cut costs for its senior employees, including ministers, permanent secretaries, judges and directors, by reducing the fleets of vehicles they use, fuel, special allowances and housing.
He suggested that the number of cabinet portfolios be reduced from almost 30 to about 10.
“It doesn’t make any sense to have, for example, two ministries of education and two for lands and agriculture when they could be merged. That is where government needs to start from,” said Robertson.
Post published in: News