FINANCE minister Patrick Chinamasa has said the government would welcome lawsuits on the $6 000 salary cap for heads of local authorities, parastatals and State enterprises, saying they would give them a public platform to discuss the matter.
BY STAFF REPOERTER
Addressing journalists at a Press briefing in Bulawayo on Wednesday evening, Chinamasa said there were companies that would be reviewing upwards and downwards after the remuneration audit.
“And also to emphasise, the $6 000 is an interim measure so that we stop the haemorrhaging that was taking place and this will be the case until we have done the remuneration audit entity by entity. When we have done the remuneration audit and we are clear about the entity’s capacity to pay, then we come up with recommendations which Cabinet would adopt,” Chinamasa said.
“And then, you will find that we will make adjustments upwards and downwards. There are already companies which I will be adjusting upwards given their capacity; given also the complexity of their work and their size. There are already companies that clearly qualify for upward adjustments.
“There are also entities which will clearly, if we temporarily put them at $6 000, may actually fall below because you must pay your way. We want the parastatals to pay their way. They used to contribute 40% to the gross domestic product, now they are an albatross around our neck which is why we challenge any of them to go to court.”
Chinamasa said he would not be surprised that those who go to court were actually the big entities weighing down the economy.
“When you are not paying yourself and you go to court and say I have been reduced from $15 000 to $6 000 and so on, we will ask you where is the money coming from? That is the question we are going to engage. If it’s coming from fees, again you will find that they were escalating fees to sustain themselves which means the cost of service delivery becomes very expensive,” Chinamasa said.
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“We will very much welcome anyone taking us to court because it will give us a clear public platform to discuss these issues. If it is me who has been misled, I will make the apologies, but we must be honest when discussing these issues; we have not been honest to each other.”
Chinamasa also said the government had come up with a governance framework “which basically says this is how we are going to run the company. If you are going to increase salaries or something, it must follow this procedure and these are the organs in your entity which must take the decision unlike currently where decisions were taken maybe by the chief executive and the chairman; that is not good corporate governance.
“And even then, no proper frameworks as to what the chief executives receive and what people below receive; we are saying the corporate governance framework must be put into law,” Chinamasa said.
