Bonus for civil servants

Patrick Chitumba Victoria Falls Reporter
CIVIL servants will be paid their bonuses this month, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said yesterday. “We are working towards the payment of the 13th cheque and that will be done at the end of November. We will honour it,” Cde Chinamasa told the Chronicle on the sidelines of a pre-budget seminar being attended by Members of Parliament in Victoria Falls.

The Government is currently in talks with unions over pay increases for public sector workers, but negotiations are being stalled by disagreements among the workers.

Unions are split over who to second to the National Joint Negotiating Council, which is expected to put its stamp to the final agreement on the proposed increment.

President Mugabe pledged to improve the working conditions of civil servants and the Government recently asked unions to come up with salary proposals.

The unions put forward a demand that the lowest paid worker must receive $600 monthly, up from about $297.
Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare secretary Mr Ngoni Masoka last Wednesday wrote a letter to all the 12 unions, urging them to submit a substantive list of their negotiators to the NJNC.

In the letter, Mr Masoka said the delay in coming up with the list was affecting salary negotiations between the Government and its workers.

“There are negotiations going on. I don’t know how far they have gone. There are people doing that and you can ask them,” said Cde Chinamasa, who is crunching numbers ahead of the 2013 national budget statement.

Meanwhile, Cde David Chapfika, the chairperson of the Committee on Finance, has criticised opposition Members of Parliament for heckling Cde Chinamasa when he stated that the economy was failing to perform because of the illegal sanctions imposed by Britain and her allies.

“The budget performance figures I am presenting did not capture the background of sanctions crippling the economy,” Cde Chinamasa had said.

The opposition MPs then shouted at Cde Chinamasa, saying he should not hide behind the sanctions.
“No, don’t talk of sanctions, which are targeted at some of your corrupt people,” shouted a legislator, interjecting Cde Chinamasa.
Cde Chinamasa continued with his presentation unmoved by the interjections.

Cde Chapfika then came in and said: “We are here using public funds and you should respect this platform. You don’t need to interject for the sake of interjecting, this is not the environment. This is serious business and immunity is only in parliament and not here. Personally, I feel embarrassed by your action because we will end up wasting the taxpayers’ money.”

At the start of the seminar, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Cde Jacob Mudenda, reprimanded some legislators for coming to the workshop late, saying they were shortchanging their electorate.

Officially opening the seminar, Cde Mudenda said the 2014 national budget should reflect the needs and aspirations of the people.
“In that regard, the pre-budget seminar must lead us to mapping out a budget that loudly and unambiguously responds to the needs and aspirations of our people as well as fulfils the promises and pledges made during the election campaigns leading to the 31 July elections,” he said.

Cde Mudenda implored legislators to closely scrutinise the national budget before passing it in terms of the Public Finance Management Act.

“Therefore a budget can be passed by Parliament between December and the end of January of the coming financial year, a period of almost 60 days. I believe this offers us sufficient time to interrogate the budget and we must make the best out of the time availed to us by statutes,” he said.

“I therefore wish to reiterate that it cannot be the role of Parliament to ‘fiddle while Rome burns’, for indeed that is how the electorate would view us if we fiddle.”