Charamba says ZBC is overstaffed

Information secretary George Charamba today said the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation is overstaffed and might have to retrench 500 workers. “Each time I look at ZBC, I am struck by the fact that out of a thousand plus workers at the ZBC, the workers who are really minding the core business of ZBC, which is to broadcast, hardly go beyond 500. If you work out the equation, it tells you that for every reporter there are 50 or so support workers around him — meanwhile the reporter goes without services, which means ZBC has taken flesh in non-core areas. That means we have to restructure in a thoroughgoing way and when we restructure, it means we are incurring retrenchment costs. It is then another spending item we have pleaded with Government to take,” he said. The board of the ZBC was dissolved last month and the chief executive sent on leave after failing to come up with a turn-around strategy. The ZBC has a debt of $44.3 million and owes employees $8.3 million. It only makes $275 000 against a budget of $2.3 million a month.

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