Fund for retrenched  civil servants on cards Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Prisca Mupfumira addresses journalists at a Press conference while the permanent secretary Mr Ngoni Masoka looks on
Minister Mupfumira

Minister Mupfumira

Walter Nyamukondiwa Chinhoyi Bureau —
Government is working on modalities to create a fund to assist civil servants retrenched during the ongoing restructuring exercise to start small businesses to sustain themselves, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Prisca Mupfumira has said.

Government is targeting to shed off about 20 000 workers from its payroll, bringing the number of civil servants to about 160 000 from around 180 000.

Learning from the previous private sector retrenchment on three months notice that left thousands jobless, Government plans to create safety nets for its workers to be affected by the job restructuring exercise.

In an interview recently, Minister Mupfumira said the restructuring programme was necessary to improve the overall performance of Government and release more funds towards service delivery.

She said the civil service staff rationalisation exercise would reposition Government as an employer of choice.

“We are coming up with schemes to assist those who might have been retrenched to start their own businesses,” she said.

“This will include setting up a fund through the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) and the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development.”

Cde Mupfumira said restructuring was ongoing to ensure Government fulfilled it’s mandate to the people of Zimbabwe.

“Restructuring is always ongoing. There is the issue of technology and relevance. Things change everyday. We cannot be static and keep with the same number of people,” she said.

“Where we need technical expertise we make sure that we recruit those. For instance, we cannot have agriculture extension workers in urban areas where there are no farms.”

She said the exercise would also seek to impose a mindset shift and work ethic in the civil service, adding that gone were the days when work was secondary.

In that regard, she said inspectors would be deployed to ensure that people were turning up for work.

“We want workers to be rewarded for work they have done and not for simply being a civil servant. We want to ensure that we have a lean and efficient workforce, which will be well remunerated. Already we can see signs of a recovering economy,” she said.

The exercise, Cde Mupfumira said, would release more funds towards service delivery as the bulk of the money was going towards wages.

She said less than 50 percent of overall ministry budget should go towards salaries, while the rest was channelled to service delivery.

Minister Mupfumira said graduates should endeavour to create employment than wait to be employed.

“Let our people, especially graduates, embrace what President Mugabe is saying with respect to creating their own employment,” she said.

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