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Diana Nherera Herald Reporter
Government is considering having salaries of foreign missions channelled through the Salary Service Bureau (SSB) to ensure that all employment costs are captured at the same time.

Presenting oral evidence to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs in Parliament recently, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development Mr Willard Manungo said Government was concerned with the welfare of foreign missions and discussions were being held to consider everyone under SSB.

“Currently, we carry out disbursements directly through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the diplomatic service,” he said.

“We are now in discussions and are considering everyone under the SSB platform so that when dealing with employment costs, we then have a situation where all costs of those within the country and those on foreign missions are captured at the same time.

“So, there are moves to try and have a situation where we process all employment costs within the country and those on foreign missions at the same time.”

Mr Manungo said Government was behind in paying salaries to foreign missions by two months and is taking steps to address the issue. “We are in regular contact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the foreign missions and if you look at developments to the end of May, we paid over $10 million on employment costs to embassies,” he said.

“We continuously make transfer payments to embassies.”

Mr Manungo said there was need to ensure that foreign missions were adequately funded and Treasury worked to address some of the challenges they faced.

“Treasury strives as much as possible to respond to some of the challenges that foreign missions have though not fully and we interact closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and embassies to try and ensure there are alleviation measures,” he said.

“If we do not adequately service the missions, then we are incapacitating them and they will not be able to do what they should.”

Mr Manungo said Government valued the political and business benefits drawn from diplomatic presence as an instrument of generating business in the 43 countries with Zim embassies.

“It is unfortunate that the resource envelope that we have does not allow us to fully empower the missions that we have in order to have a fuller representation that also embraces trying to explore business opportunities for the country, he said.

Mr Manungo said a significant number of staff recalls have been made, a situation which meant that Treasury had to provide resources to facilitate the increase in employees. “Some of the challenges that the foreign missions face relate to levels of expenditure that we had to make to facilitate the large number of recalls that we have been able to make as Government,” he said.