GOVERNMENT will fork out $22 million annually to pay over 3
000 youths President Robert Mugabe wants put back in the civil service,
information obtained by The Financial Gazette shows.
The workers, employed under the Ministry of Youth,
Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment, will require at least $1,8 million in
salaries, according to a 2015 civil service audit report.
The youths were retrenched last year under government’s
civil service rationalisation programme meant to help reduce the State’s huge
wage bill. Government spent 91 percent of its $3,5 billion revenues on
employment costs in 2016, as it ran up a $1,4 billion budget
deficit which it
funded through borrowing.
Mugabe has publicly slapped down Finance and Economic
Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa twice over the past three years, when
the Treasury chief tried to cut the civil service wage bill through the
suspension of bonus payments, job and allowance cuts.
The 2015 civil service audit had proposed a reduction of
the number of youth officers from a ratio of five youth officers per ward to
one youth officer per ward, which would have translated to an annual saving of
$21,6 million.
But Mugabe recently ordered that the 3 187 youths be put
back on the government payroll, saying their retrenchment had not been
sanctioned by his Cabinet.
Mugabe, who is facing a decisive election in less than nine
months, ordered the reinstatement of the retrenched youths at a ZANU-PF rally
in Chinhoyi last week.
The move is certainly going to undermine current efforts by
the Civil Service Commission, which has been busy executing a civil service
rationalisation programme initiated following the 2015 staff audit.
According to the audit report, which indicates that there
had been plans to actually increase the number of youth officers from 3 463 to
5 714, the youth officers could not be located during the audit.
There have been long-standing suspicions that the youths
are ruling ZANU-PF party foot soldiers on the government payroll.
“During the head count, the Public Service Commission could
not locate the youth officers at their given work stations. However, they later
surfaced for the purpose of enumeration …
There was no evidence of specific
projects youths officers were undertaking especially in urban areas.
Information gathered indicates that some of these youth officers might be
gainfully employed elsewhere,” said the audit report.
Analysts said the reinstatement of the youths showed
Mugabe’s determination to recruit a contingent of youths to help in his
campaign in next year’s landmark general elections.
The employment of the youths would be clearly contrary to
undertakings of major reforms government had made as it seeks re-engagement
with the international community.
The World Bank last month advised that the country needed
strong policies such as cutting down on the oversized government workforce to
restore fiscal sustainability and increase financial stability.
“Specifically, the size of the public sector primarily
reflects a large public sector wage bill … The high public sector wage bill
creates rigidity in the budget, and undermines the role of fiscal policy in
economic development,” the World Bank has been warning over the years.
Economist John Robertson said Mugabe’s move would only
serve to “annoy those who could be helping us”.
“Reengaging the retrenched youths is telling the IMF
(International Monetary Fund) that we don’t care about their programme,” he
added, referring to an IMF-led Staff Monitored Programme under which government
committed to a raft of reforms, including trimming the size of the civil
service.
Another economist, Prosper Chitambara, said Mugabe’s gamesmanship
ahead of the 2018 general elections would further dent the country’s chances of
making the necessary reforms meant to grow the economy.
“I don’t think we will now be able to make the necessary
reforms to get us out of the economic quagmire we are in because we don’t have
the financial capacity to make the reforms,” said Chitambara. Financial gazette
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