I will start by wishing the new ministers in the inclusive government success in every effort they take to stop Zimbabwe from hemorrhaging and rescue the economy from the continuous slide into the abyss.

I am already touched by the Minster of Education, Sports and Culture’s honest assertion that the government is broke and therefore cannot afford to pay civil servants, especially teachers, anything above USD100. He should be applauded for being honest. However I want to ask the entire cabinet where they are going to get the money to pay the 71 minsters and deputies and buy them cars, furnish and staff their offices? Why is it that the civil servants have to wait to be paid adequately but at the same time we have not heard that the minsters are not going to stop getting their perks for one month until government gets the necessary funds?

Can they lead by example and start by tightening their belts themselves by trimming all the unnecessary perks with effect from the end of this month? This can be done by avoiding buying mercs for all the ministers for example but perhaps this might be too late because already the MDC would want to miss the gravy train I wonder?

The MDC as a workers’ party should understand that our children have missed out on a whole year because teachers were on strike – all they are asking for is a decent living wage. I thought the MDC would look at the civil servants’ plight and give them a decent living wage because USD100 is not enough to pay for a passport, rent, electricity and school fees which is between USD100 – 250 in some of these cheap government schools. So if a teacher who is a graduate cannot even earn a salary that is enough to send just one child to school what does that say for all of us? We do not want to see a repeat of the same behaviour and uncaring attitude from the government as was the norm with ZANU PF.

But already this government is so bloated that the taxpayer including civil servants are going to carry this heavy burden while their plight is shelved for later.

This entry was posted on February 24th, 2009 at 9:24 am by Sophie Zvapera and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.