By Change Radio Reporter|
Former Finance minister and CCC Vice President Hon Tendai Biti has said that the 100% pay increase to civil servants may trigger inflation since it was done without consulting the parliament and it was not budgeted for.
He said “The 100% salary increase to public servants will not fool civil servants. For years teachers and doctors have demanded a decent salary pegged in US dollar but the regime has refused. Making nominal increases a few months before an election is a tactic often used in tin pot Republics.
Citizens will never be fooled by cheap populist expenditure & freebies dished out on eve of Ann election .We make the point that civil servant salaries should be pegged inUS$ at their 2014 baseline of at least US$500. Anything short of this is short changing the worker.
We also object to unilateral wage increases made without consulting labor unions. Civil servants have a right to collective bargaining and have strong Unions that have been fighting their cause for decades.Unilateral imposition of a wage is a disrespectful unfair labor practice
The wage increase was not budgeted for and is therefore being done outside parliament.
Continuous abuse of parliament has become DNA of regime. The massive un budgeted payout will be financed by money printing which will drive inflation. The exchange rate has moved to 1:1400 to US dollar
An inflation spike is thus inevitable as Zim sinks back into another crises of over accumulation characterized by too much money chasing too few goods. We saw this in 2008, 2018 and 2022. Zimbabwe can’t continue to be arrested in these permanent bubbles of an overheating economy.
The regime s move is populist.Populism is short term & not sustainable.We write about this extensively in our new book “In the Name of the People “ which we launch in Harare tomorrow.Zim does not need populism but a radical disruptive agenda of Radical Economic Transformation”
