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NewsDay

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Mugabe blows $10m on foreign travels

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President Robert Mugabe has so far spent more than $10 million on foreign trips since January at a time his broke government is battling to pay its workers and grow the stunted economy.

President Robert Mugabe has so far spent more than $10 million on foreign trips since January at a time his broke government is battling to pay its workers and grow the stunted economy.

by OWN CORRESPONDENT

Mugabe — who has been in and out of the country no less than seven times in the past three months — spends at least $2 million for the duration of the chartered Air Zimbabwe aircraft wherever he travels and allowances of his staff. Well-placed government sources said Mugabe alone receives $600 000 in allowances on each trip, with each aide travelling with him getting a minimum of at least $500 per day depending on the destination.

Besides the travel allowances, the government pays for the President’s hotel stay, where he is booked with at least 60 aides, including a medical doctor, in top-class hotels.

“The President gets $600 000 in allowances for his incidental cover, and in the past two months, Treasury has paid at least $3,6 million for the presidential allowances, excluding the money given to his aides,” a source within the Office of the President said.

“Air Zimbabwe gets on average $1 million for each trip depending on the route and how long the President will spend on that trip.”

The Office of the President manages its own budget.

Whenever the 91-year-old leader is travelling, the national carrier, Air Zimbabwe, is forced to stay with him until he returns, with sources indicating that the Office of the President pays $1 million for each trip. Since his return from the Far East, where he had gone on a month-long holiday with his family, Mugabe has flown out of Zimbabwe six more times, with the first trip being to Zambia, where he attended the inauguration of new Zambian President Edgar Lungu, who replaced the late Michael Sata, who died last year. Mugabe then left for Ethiopia for the African Union summit, where he was elected the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government chairperson.

Barely spending three days in Harare, Mugabe flew out again to Asia, where he went to collect his ailing wife, Grace, who was admitted at a private hospital — all on State funding.

The President then stayed home less than two weeks and was on his way to South Africa for the Sadc Troika summit on Lesotho, in his capacity as the regional bloc’s chair.

Last week, Mugabe was in Japan for the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction where he spent a week.

Upon his return last Thursday, Mugabe spent barely a day in the country before flying to Namibia to witness the inauguration of that country’s new President, Hage Geingob.

On Tuesday this week, Mugabe was on another flight to Algeria on a four-day State visit, which government officials said was meant to cement relations with the North African country.

According to sources, the President is reportedly set to fly out early next month to South Africa on another three-day State visit, before travelling to the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa and then India.

Although efforts to get a comment from Presidential spokesperson George Charamba were fruitless, his Zanu PF party and government officials have defended the trips, saying Mugabe was not only Zimbabwe’s leader, but also chairperson of regional bloc Sadc as well as the AU.

Speaking at a rally in Mvuma over the weekend, Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa said Mugabe now had many duties to attend to and he was likely to be out of the country very often.

But the main opposition MDC-T said this was detrimental to the country.

“The MDC is hugely concerned by Robert Mugabe’s frequent absences from Zimbabwe,” MDC-T spokesman Obert Gutu said. “While the economy continues to nosedive and the public health delivery system has literally gone to the dogs, we have a President who is now permanently domiciled aboard an Air Zimbabwe jet as he hops from one foreign destination to another.

“It is high time that Robert Mugabe was called to order. It’s either he chooses to enjoy his favourite pastime of flying around the globe or he stays put at State House in Harare and works very hard to ensure that Zimbabwe’s comatose economy is brought back to life. Mugabe cannot and, indeed, he should not have it both ways.”