FINANCE deputy minister Terence Mukupe has ruled out any job cuts or salary reduction in the civil service, saying instead President Emmerson Mnangagwa was targeting a further pay rise.
by XOLISANI NCUBE
Addressing students at Nyadire Teachers’ College on Tuesday, Mukupe said with a 17,5 % salary increment awarded to civil servants recently, the country’s wage bill was to set to increase but Mnangagwa’s administration had plans to contain the pressure on the fiscus.
“I think you have heard other parties saying the wage bill is too high. But the truth of the matter is that the salary given to our civil servants is very low. Our civil servants are underpaid. The money our teachers get is not what they should get. So the question is, who is taking the so-called high wage bill?” Mukupe asked.
Zimbabwe spends more than 80% of its revenue on salaries for its workers, a development that has been attributed to a low rate of infrastructure development.
“The answer to the question is that we need to grow our revenue base. We can’t reduce our service as this will mean cutting our teachers, then the security sector and so on and so forth. We need to improve our revenue streams so that we are able to fund our service,” Mukupe said.
“The truth of the matter is our civil service ratio to the population is very bad. Let’s look at teachers, our student: teacher ratio is very high, a teacher in our schools attends to 40 students per teacher. Our health workers ratio is also high so is our police ratio to the population. The key issue is revenue.”
Mukupe has been addressing students across the country drumming up support for Zanu PF ahead of next month’s elections.
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Mukupe was accompanied by Zanu PF secretary for Youth Affairs Pupurai Togarepi who told the students that his party would win the elections as its structures were enough to vote for Mnangagwa.
“Our structures are enough to vote for Zanu PF. From our structures, we have at least 3,5 million voters in the bag. You can’t win an election without structures,” Togarepi said.
