adminMernat Mafirakurewa Business Editor
THE obscene salaries earned by senior managers in parastatals and a skewed pricing system characterised by huge mark-ups is hurting the ordinary consumers who have to bear the brunt of the rising cost of living, a Cabinet Minister has said.Addressing journalists in Bulawayo on Thursday, Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo, said: “Zimbabweans have never known a clean deal. They have never negotiated a deal. Every deal they have been involved in has a mark up.
“Those South Africans around the Black Economic Empowerment have tender-prenuers. Ours are dealer-prenuers, just dealing dealing. More specifically we find that this is being triggered by senior managers of parastatals as individuals not working with anybody or any party but working as individuals of parastatals, state enterprises and local authorities.”
Prof Moyo said the skewed pricing model was having a negative impact on the common man whose salary has remained low.
“The other guys down there are continuing to receive peanuts in terms of salaries but the price if you are now linking to procurement and so forth, becomes distorted isn’t it. So the costs of doing business increases and the cost of living increases,” he said adding: “That’s why it’s a very serious problem but worse, it debases our values, our sense of morality because it is bad. It brings a new and dangerous culture of doing business and continues to maintain a negative sovereign risk and access to offshore money.”
Prof Moyo said post dollarisation, Zimbabweans had failed to appreciate the true value of the United States dollar hence the wrong pricing model currently obtaining in the country.
He said what compounded the situation was the entities involved in the salary-gate were frontline providers of goods and services to the average person.
The chairperson of the Cabinet Committee on State Enterprises and Parastatals Development and Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa last week said the committee had begun dealing with the malaise of salaries, allowances of senior managers of these entities and their procurement practices.
The country has in recent months been rocked by a number of tender scandals and huge salaries being earned by parastatal bosses at the expense of service providers.
Senior managers at Premier Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS) were until recently gobbling $1 million in basic monthly salaries at a time the entity had not settled a $38 million debt.
Online Reporter