The government has ruled out fully paying civil servants in US dollars despite the rising cost of living and the ever depreciation of the Zimbabwe Dollar.
Finance and Economic Development Minister, Mthuli Ncube told legislators this week that the government will maintain the existing salaries structure where workers are paid in both the local and foreign currency.
“We have mainly pursued a two-pronged strategy for salaries only, the monetary benefits. We have a ZWL component and we have a USD component.
“We introduced the USD component to manage the inflationary pressures that civil servants face. The first thing we did was to introduce the USD75 amount as part of the Covid-19 risk allowance measures and then we added USD100 per person.
“As I speak, we are seized with discussions with the leaders of the civil service in terms of the union to agree on a new package. We are working hard on it and will also benefit from those discussions,” Ncube said.
He noted that the government is in consultations on how to improve civil servants’ salaries taking into account the current inflationary levels and the hike in prices in our shops.
However, he insisted that there would be no return to full dollarisation which he said is a bad idea for economic growth.
“That is a very bad idea to only accept USD in our country. Let me further explain what will happen under US dollarization which is what happened during the Unity Government. What happened is that there was deflation and deflation means that we had negative growth and that was totally undesirable,” he noted.
Alfa Chikodzi / June 17, 2022
This ZWL is killing our livelihoods please. Where are all these minerals going to if our currency is failing to gain stability. Wat growth when there is no evidence of any improvement. If Mthuli was using ZWL maybe he would appreciate but alas he is on USD 100%
/