Chronicle Editor
The past few days must have been merry for civil servants as the Government has fulfilled its promise to pay them Covid-19 allowances in US$.
This must be a very welcome relief for most civil servants who have been struggling, like their peers in the private sector, to make ends meet on low salaries amid high inflation and the resulting increases in prices of goods and services. While salaries have been trailing prices over the past few years, the outbreak of Covid-19 has widened the gap. Recognising the negative impact of the pandemic on its workers’ livelihoods, the Government came up with the relief package last month.
Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Professor Paul Mavima told our sister paper, Sunday News on Saturday that civil servants had indeed started receiving the money. When the Government announced the allowance last month, it said each civil servant would receive US$75 per month as a Covid-19 allowance and told them to open foreign currency accounts with their banks. However, because of logistical challenges, the money was not paid in that month, meaning that the workers are receiving a total of US$150 for June and this month.
The market has generally been unkind to most workers, particularly those who lack foreign currency. A number of shops are pegging their prices in US$ or South African rand and the prices in local currency are given on request and are based on the often erratic black market rate. Therefore, anyone holding local currency cannot know for certain how much they will spend on anything. They cannot draw up a budget because they are never sure how much in local currency whatever they want to buy costs. They will only know at the point of sale.
Much of this uncertainty will be alleviated for civil servants as the US$ allowance will enable them to hold a currency of more stable value, a currency which the market, for now, finds attractive. It removes the anxiety that was being experienced by civil servants who had no idea how they would be able to stretch their wages across the month. We regard that certainty as very essential for a meaningful existence. On that score, we, if we can speak on behalf of civil servants, thank the Government for coming up with the Covid-19 allowance.
Civil servants will now be able to buy more food for their families than they did before its introduction. At US$75, the allowance might appear small for some but anyone who has gone shopping with US$50 knows the amount of items they were able to buy with that sum. With US$75 in hand, civil servants will certainly buy a substantial amount of groceries. This month will be good for them as they have a total of US$150.
Considering that the allowance is coming on top of their salaries, civil servants will be better off.
We hope they will find the allowance useful while the Government continues to work out measures to stabilise the economy to be able to pay its workers higher salaries.
The challenge now is on the private sector to pay its workers a portion of their wages in US$. For now, we recognise that some companies lack capacity to pay their workers wholly in foreign currency. In addition to that, we don’t think paying workers wholly in foreign currency would be ideal since we have a local currency whose use must be as extensive as necessary for the economy to grow on a sustainable basis.
However, as a stop-gap measure, we don’t see anything wrong in the private sector following the good example that the Government has set. They can decide to do what the Government has done, not paying real US$ to their employees but to pay them vouchers denominated in US$ that they can use as civil servants are doing when buying from the shops.
Online Reporter