Civil servants salaries not likely to spill into 2017

The government does not foresee a situation where it will fail to pay civil servants and is working flat out to ensure that pay dates return to normal.

Deputy Public Service Minister Tapiwa Matangaidze said the government had already brought forward pay dates for civil servants and did not foresee a situation where it would fail to meet its obligations.

He was responding to a question by Mkoba legislator Amos Chibaya who wanted to know whether civil servants might not get to December with salaries for some months still unpaid.

The government has been failing to pay civil servants on time because of cash shortages but it is introducing bond notes from 1 October, a move that is likely to ease the situation.

There has been strong resistance to the introduction of bond notes as some people view this as the bringing back of the Zimbabwe dollar through the back door.

Q & A:

*HON. CHIBAYA: Thank you Mr. Speaker. My question is directed to the Deputy Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Services. Hon. Minister, the delay that you are experiencing in paying civil servants, are we not likely to get to December with the civil servants not having been paid some months salaries? What steps have you put in place to ensure that your workers get their salaries timeously? I thank you.

*THE DEPUTY MINISTER OF PUBLIC SERVICE, LABOUR AND SOCIAL SERVICES (HON. ENG. MATANGAIDZE) Thank you Hon. Speaker. I would like to thank the Hon. Member for the question. If you look at it, you would see that we are starting to pay from the 23rd, 26th, 2nd and lastly on the 6th. You will observe that we delayed in the payments of pensioners last month, but we have now brought this forward. We do not foresee a situation where we will have failed to pay certain months, come December. As Government, we are working to ensure that normalcy returns to the normal payment dates for the Civil Service and others. I thank you.

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