Treasury out of line on payroll loans

THE Finance ministry’s admission that it deliberately delayed the remittance of payroll-deducted loan repayments to certain financial institutions has shed light on a quiet but corrosive crisis in Zimbabwe’s labour market: the debt bondage of civil servants. 

On the surface, Treasury’s intervention appears legally and morally defensible. 

Evidence that some lenders have violated the Moneylending and Rates of Interest Act, the Microfinance Act and the long-established in duplum rule is deeply troubling. 

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