Govt staff rationalisation could take years: Mupfumira

GOVERNMENT’s plan to reduce its bloated wage bill could take years because it is a “process”, Public Service minister Prisca Mupfumira said yesterday.

Mupfumira told journalists on the sidelines of the extraordinary committee meeting for labour senior officials for English-speaking African countries yesterday that, while the government was cognisant of the unsustainable expenditure on salaries and wages, the process of rationalisation could not be abruptly implemented.

“We started at the end of last year and our plan is to reach a situation, where at least the government wage bill is about 40% of the country’s revenue rather than the situation we have, where between 80 and 90% goes to this purpose,” she said.

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