Civil servants invade Biti's Office over salaries

Bank chaos created by the Junta returns to haunt coalition government as civil servants fail to redeem their forex stipends
By: Denford Magora/Zimbabwe Observer
Army personnel in uniform engaged in a fist-fight with policemen in uniform in Africa Unity Square in Harare today. Africa Unity Square is right in front of parliament in the capital.

The fight apparently started outside CABS in First Street, where the uniformed forces were waiting for the arrival of their foreign currency salary allowances. It is still not clear at this stage what exactly triggered it.

But the last time the police and soldiers clashed in Harare it was over money and payment of salaries.

Witnesses saw a bleeding policeman being loaded into a police van and driven away as the fight drew to an end. The fight ended when .. a huge lorry, covered with canvas at the back, arrived at the Square with military police on board
When the truck arrived, some of soldiers quickly disappeared, some going towards First Street and others, crossing the park towards Meikles Hotel.

This incident also saw some civil servants invading Tendai Biti's office in Harare. Biti is also the MDC Secretary-General and Zimbabwe's Minister of Finance. The civil servants had gone to a local bank (Agribank) to withdraw their US$100 salaries using the vouchers given to them by the government. Agribank was refusing to honour these vouchers, claiming that they had not received any money from the government to disburse.
The civil servants who invaded Biti's office included teachers. They refused to leave until the matter was resolved. Biti went with them to Agribank on Park Street in Harare. He went into a meeting with the management of the bank. The meeting was closed to the public, including the civil servants who had gone to complain.

It appears the meeting did not bear much fruit because even later today, the civil servants were still waiting outside CABS and Agribank. (Local banks)

Sources within government from ZANU PF said it was Biti's idea to have the vouchers exchanged for cash. The original idea was to get the civil servants to use the vouchers to purchase goods directly from shops.

The Reserve Bank had warned Biti that there was not enough cash to meet the demand that would ensue. Mugabe himself, in his birthday interview, also said that he did not think the move was sustainable "because we don't have the money."

MDC sources say the problem being experienced by the current inclusive government is a result of the massive 'looting' that was undertaken by the "caretaker cabinet" of President Mugabe, which was in place awaiting the appointment of Tsvangirai as Prime Minister.

They basically cleaned the government out, externalising huge sums of money as a result of a loophole the Reserve Bank worked into its last Monetary Policy Statement, basically dumping all forms of Exchange Control regulation.

Auditing of the Reserve Bank has been blocked by President Mugabe and the MDC have given in, for now. In retaliation, Biti has since announced that all government revenue from now on will be kept at Treasury, meaning the Ministry and not the Reserve Bank.

His revised Budget statement last week also removed every single levy and source of income for the Reserve Bank. Which means the RBZ now has no income generating opportunities at all.


Biti has told the MDC leadership that, through this strategy, he fully expects that Gono will be asking for money to run the Reserve Bank within about six months. It is at that time that the Minister of Finance intends to revive the issue of the firing of the Central Bank Governor, which has, in the meantime, been ruled out flat by President Mugabe.

Sources say the handling of the civil servants salary dispute is a powder keg waiting to explode. Previous rebellions had been directed at the reserve bank governor. The last rebellion by soldiers who had failed to access their money due to the withdrawal limit placed by the reserve Governor resulted in some of them going to his farm and impounding a lot of chickens saying they were hungry.
To this day, the soldiers who took all those chickens have not been apprehended.

Zimbabweans close to events believe that unless the MDC can get some form of funding from outside, they do not really do not expect this coalition to last till the end of the year. The problem is compounded by the MDC's failure to come up with proper policies for driving the economy. At the moment, they are focusing on simply keeping Zimbabwe limping