Editorial Comment: Temper salary demands with reality Minister Chinamasa

Civil servants need to exercise restraint in their demands for a salary increment. Understandably, Government has come out in the open to say it is in a quagmire and cannot afford any salary hikes.

It said that the wage bill has grown to $3 billion from $550 million a few years ago at a time Government’s revenue base is shrinking, leaving Treasury incapacitated to add even a dollar to the current wage bill. We do commiserate with Government and hope the civil servants will understand. They may not have much of a choice in this regard.

Issues to do with salaries, and therefore, people’s livelihoods are very sensitive subjects that need careful handling, hence we hope civil servants’ representative bodies will not be as excitable as they sometimes are in their quest to have their demands met, even when the situation on the ground dictates otherwise.

Government is clearly overburdened by the huge salary bill which takes a big chunk of the National Budget, constraining its ability to undertake capital projects.

This, juxtaposed with an economy that is largely constricted, leaves the Government’s bargaining power compromised. Reduced economic activity, manifesting in the closure of companies and low production capacity, among other challenges, has meant that its purse has also shrunk considerably.

A Government position paper presented to civil servants unions last week was quite instructive: “Civil staff associations will hopefully accept there is a problem which requires immediate solutions. Our struggling economy cannot sustain the current high salary budget. A paradigm shift is required if this country is to come out of the woods.”

Issues such as the much-talked about overstaffing in Government, low productivity levels and failure to adhere to strict corporate governance tenets, in some instances, combine to make the situation even more challenging for Government.

This means that for the time being, civil servants will have to make huge sacrifices which include trying to stretch their current salaries.

Hard choices in terms of lifestyle will need to be made by the civil servants along with the generality of Zimbabweans while efforts are being undertaken to revive the economy. It is indeed time for a serious reality check.

We commend the establishment of a committee headed by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa to work on reducing the unsustainably high salary bill. The committee should come up with clear strategies on how Government can tackle the issue in a manner that does not necessarily leave the civil servants feeling unappreciated.

In fact, what needs to be understood also is that this challenge is not confined to Government. The private sector is struggling to meet wage and salary demands in a scenario where production levels continue to decline.

Workers’ unions have on countless occasions found themselves at loggerheads with employers and yet the latter have not had much of a space to manoeuvre given declining revenue figures.

FBC Bank chairman Mr Herbert Nkala last week conceded that “unrealistic” wage expectations were harming private sector performance. He said the economy had not benefited from negative inflation because of high wage demands.

“If there was a proper realignment of wages to output, I think many of our industries could compete,” he said.

The truth of the matter, therefore, is that Zimbabweans, as stated by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya a few months ago, should face reality and accept that presently the economy cannot sustain salary increases.

Efforts should be directed towards improving Zimbabwe’s economic performance to keep the anticipated 3,2 percent GDP growth projections for 2015 alive. The African Development Bank has said the figure is achievable but we need to put all our hands on deck and behave responsibly for a better tomorrow.

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