The Ministry is made up of civil service personnel, Zimbabwe Defence Forces and a combination of the Army, Air Force services and the Zimbabwe National War Veterans Affairs. It managed to achieve its set targets in 2017 despite the funding challenges which affected it. The Ministry is determined to achieve its constitutional and statutory obligations in 2018 financial year and has a set of priorities that have to be fulfilled. In 2018, the Ministry was allocated a total of $420.4 million of which $322.1 million over employment needs leaving only $98.3 million for operations and capital projects. This allocation of $98.3 million is only 30% of ideal requirements of $325.9 million which was bided to cater for prioritised expenditure instead of the Ministry’s excluding employment costs and outstanding debt.
The Ministry has an outstanding cumulative debt amounting to $69.4 million which if paid from $98.3 ….
THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER: Order, order, Hon. Member, can you stick to the recommendations of the Committee?
HON. T. DUBE: Alright, I will go to the recommendations. After an analysis of the Ministry’s budget, your Committee made the following recommendations:-
3.1Treasury should take over the Ministry’s outstanding debt and pay the Ministry’s service providers their dues including war veterans school fees, arrears dating back to the third term of 2015 so that operations earmarked for 2018 are fully funded.
3.2 Treasury should prioritise adequately funding critical expenditure items such as institutional provisions which include uniforms, rations, medical services, accommodation, training and development expenses.
3.3 Expenditure items that result in increased internal capacities and efficiency of the Ministry must be fully funded. These are:-
i. Training of the Defence Forces,
ii. Provision of training needs that include training material, facilities and equipment. In that same vein, procurement and regular maintenance of state of the art technical military equipment and facilities should be prioritized and adequately funded to improve internal capacity and efficiency and lengthen the military equipment’s life span,
iii. Servicing the Defence Force’s vehicles and other mobile equipment,
iv. Maintenance and servicing of the force’s aircraft (including complete engine overhaul for aircrafts),
3.4 The Ministry of Defence should be exempted from the recruitment freeze and be allowed to recruit and train new staff to prevent skills and human resource gap.
3.5 Treasury should target fully funding the completion of housing and other PSIP projects which have high impact on the Ministry’s long run. These projects are :-
· Dzivarasekwa Housing Project;
· Solomon Mujuru Cadet Accommodation in Gweru, and –
[HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] –
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