Civil servant salary increment long overdue

IT is reported in the mainstream media that government is currently considering effecting a salary increase for civil servants on the existing salary structure — the US dollar and Zimdollar components.

The last pay increase for the civil service was instituted in the first quarter of 2023 when the gross Zimdollar emoluments were hiked by 100%, cushioning and COVID-19 allowances were increased by 25% to US$250 from US$200, and an introduction of US$80 teaching allowance for public teachers.

Also, Treasury increased the cushioning and COVID-19 allowance for pensioners by 11,1% to US$100 from US$90 and promised a government-funded funeral insurance framework as well as a free primary school education up to a maximum of three children at government schools for all civil servants.

The latest salary offer from government was inevitable as the nation is battling galloping inflation, which saw shelf prices of many basics in formal shops moving beyond the reach of many.

June 2023 witnessed an unsustainable decline of the Zimdollar against the US dollar on both official and parallel markets.

In the official market, Treasury and of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Monetary Policy Committee instituted a cocktail of fiscal and monetary policy measures that revolutionised the operational dynamics of the RBZ’s foreign currency auction market and a seismic shift towards a fully liberalised willing-buyer willing-seller interbank market.

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The willing-buyer willing-seller interbank market is the official market that determines the market reference exchange rate and businesses are allowed a 10% margin above the interbank rate when pricing goods and services in Zimdollars.

Consequent to the foregoing policy shifts by government, improved Zimdollar price discovery saw the local currency plunging massively on the interbank market in June 2023.

RBZ interbank statistics show that as of June 26, the Zimdollar had erased 62,4% of its value against the greenback from 1:2 577,06 end of May 2023 to 1:6 862,28.

In the alternative (parallel) markets, the local unit of exchange also declined excessively as it lost 54,4% of its average value from 1:3 600 realised at the end of May 2023.

This elevated decline of the Zimdollar is disproportionately affecting Zimdollar earners, thus widening societal inequality and plunging the majority into abject poverty.

For instance, the June 2023 Zimdollar salary component received by least paid civil servants, who constitute the majority of the service was below $100 000 yet a two-litre bottle of cooking oil is selling above $30 000 in many retail shops.

This shows that workers earning Zimdollar salaries that do not match the prevailing exchange rate movements have been reduced to paupers.

The importance of public services and public servants cannot be overemphasised.

They allow government to respond to natural disasters, efficiently manage immigration systems, ensure safe food and medicines, safeguard national security, and upliftment of vulnerable groups and marginalised communities among many other key functions.

Given the vitality of public services in moving the nation forward, the proposed salary review is crucial as it will go a long way in boosting the morale of public workers and reducing the ongoing brain drain in the public sector.

However, the increment on the Zimdollar salary component will likely increase local currency liquidity on the market, thus fuelling exchange rate instability.

This will, in turn, exert a knock-on effect on prices leading to another round of price madness particularly in the formal sector.

Although the increase in the US dollar salary component is the only practical non-inflationary way of cushioning civil servants which will also result in a real jump in consumer spending, it risks increasing the creation/printing of local US dollars by the central bank.

Treasury spending is spiking unsustainably as it recently took over forex surrender requirements which were previously settled by RBZ and also assumed all external financial obligations owed by RBZ.

These are additions to an already elevated fiscal spending path supporting the agricultural sector (winter wheat farming and procurement of grains by Grain Marketing Board), funding ongoing infrastructural projects, and providing resources for the 2023 harmonised elections slated for August 23, 2023.

In the end, if the burgeoning fiscal spending is not curtailed within sustainable territory, it will likely force authorities to print local versions of US dollars.

And these local US dollars normally trade at a premium on the market, thus completing a vicious cycle of currency instability. - Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development

THE Election Resource Centre Africa (ERC) condemns in the strongest terms the threats made against the National Election Watch (NEW), an independent non-partisan coalition of over 400 national and international civil society and non-governmental organisations established to monitor the transparency and credibility of elections in Sierra Leone.

The threats follow publication by NEW of result projections following the June 24, 2023 presidential, parliamentary and local authority election, in which the projections of NEW’s process and results verification for transparency methodology unearthed anomalies and inconsistencies in the results announced by the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL).

These threats seek to undermine the right of not only the organisation to conduct impartial election observation and defend the right of citizens to vote, but the right of Sierra Leone citizens to democratic, free and fair elections.

ERC-Africa also supports demands by NEW for the release of all polling station-level results by ECSL.

This is important to ensure an open, transparent and independent analysis and verification of the results.

As such, ERC urges all relevant authorities incuding the ECSL to take all necessary steps to establish conditions that allow election observers to effectively do their work, and to protect them from any form of intimidation. - ERC

I DIRECT attention to a recent news report in the NewsDay on the arrest of Council for Legal Education (CLE) executive secretary Huggins Hardwork Duri over receiving bribes in order to issue conversion certificates to lawyers who never sat for examinations.

I write to inform that every CLE candidate knows this is just a tip of the iceberg.

There is rampant institutionalised corruption at CLE and the first stage of this corruption is via charging exorbitant examination fees in United States dollars and using the black market rate.

This is meant to drive candidate traffic towards senior staff like Duri so that you pass once off.

For those who refuse to pay bribes, CLE makes sure they fail at the first attempt, and will only pass after the second, third or fourth sitting.

CLE has become a new Vehicle Inspectorate Department (for driver’s licence) that went to a private school.

If one adds the amounts paid for re-sitting, it becomes a no brainer to approach people like Duri so that they get it done and dusted.

There is a CLE board member who is also a senior labour lawyer who is known for declaring that “50% of the candidates who sit for the examination should not pass”.

To get a 53% pass mark at CLE is an achievement of a lifetime.

Investigations should start by auditing manuscripts for the March 2023 examinations and the results will shock anyone.

Candidates who would have passed but did not pay bribes are made to fail and are replaced by those who would have paid bribes so that CLE maintains its “not more than 50% should pass policy”.

There is also a University of Zimbabwe Law School syndrome where examiners look down upon any law student who did not go via UZ (ironically UZ is the alpha of examination paper leakages!) and CLE attends to the funnel/gatekeeping system of limiting the number of lawyers who get into the market just to protect UZ Law School “monopoly”.

Investigations on Duri should be widened as his crime is not individual, but institutional.

Start auditing the March examinations, give the manuscripts to independent markers and compare their marks with the ones CLE gave candidates.

CLE is an institution where corruption writ large. - Anon