Newsday
Opinion
August 24 2015
THE government is under pressure to reduce its wage bill, but this should be done in a fair and transparent manner. Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa announced that Treasury wanted to cut the share of civil servants salaries by half from about 83% to 40% of the National Budget.
The expenditure on government salaries is an albatross on the economy and cannot be sustained for a long time.
Chinamasa was not clear on how the wage bill would be reduced by 50% when he presented his mid-term fiscal policy review, but Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare minister Prisca Mupfumira was quoted categorically saying there would be no retrenchments.
However, the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) on Friday claimed that 1 000 had lost their jobs after the government carried out a head count early this year in an effort to establish the exact number of civil servants.
The headcount was carried despite a more scientific audit of the civil service during the inclusive government era that exposed more than 75 000 ghost workers on the payroll.
The audit, carried out by Ernst&Young (India), revealed that most of these ghost workers were employed by the Youth and Indigenisation ministry ahead of the 2013 elections.
Speculation was rife that these people were recruited to campaign for Zanu PF ahead of the make-or-break polls.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been a low hanging fruit for the government to reduce its wage bill by getting rid of ghost workers, but in typical Zanu PF fashion, properly recruited and trained teachers are being targeted.
The teachers have not received their salaries despite the fact that they were at work during the previous school term.
Teachers in Zimbabwe are already a demoralised lot amid persistent complaints about poor salaries and working conditions. According to issues tabled at the Zimta annual conference held in Harare at the weekend, teachers are also unhappy about loss of bargaining power and unfulfilled promises made by the government concerning their conditions of service.
Primary and Secondary Education minister Lazarus Dokora has also been introducing unending policy changes that have left teachers confused at many levels.
All this is happening at a time when the education sector has been showing signs of recovery after the hyperinflation induced crisis that reached its climax in 2009.
Teachers left the country in droves to seek better employment opportunities in neighbouring countries and those who remained had no motivation to teach.
Former Education minister David Coltart did exceptional work to restore some normalcy in the education sector, but the wheels have started to come off again largely because of Dokora’s disruptive policies.
The uncertainty caused by the government’s clandestine retrenchment exercise disguised as an onslaught against ghost workers would further destabilise the education system.
In case the Zanu PF government is unhappy with the findings of the Ernst&Young (India) investigation, it should commission its own audit that should pass the transparency, fairness and accuracy test.
President Robert Mugabe’s government has polluted the civil service by planting its acolytes and compromised professionalism, which makes it difficult to trust that the removal of civil servants from the payroll is being carried out in a fair manner.
The government has to guard against disrupting the education sector by haphazardly removing teachers from the payroll.
The exercise also raises many questions because it is mostly teachers who are being removed from the payroll yet the audit pointed out that the ghost workers were mainly found in the Youth ministry.