Zimbabwe Finance Minister laments he has no money to spend as $97 out of every $100 he gets goes to wages but he is not adopting South African rand

On user fees Mr. Speaker Sir, there are user fees which are collected at universities and other institutions.  We all stand here to say medical treatment, drugs and everything must be for free even when we know that Government has no capacity to do all those things – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] –

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER (HON. MARUMAHOKO): Hon. Members can you lower your voices.

HON. CHINAMASA: I heard someone saying education must also be free.  We should work out the equation, if we say it is for free, who is going to pay for it.  Why do we not ask ourselves such simple and straight forward questions?  If you are asking for free things, someone must pay and who is that?  As a result of psyching our people that they must get everything free, there is no contribution.  We tell school children that you do not pay, parents do not pay and as a result pupils go to school without text books, benches, desks or other items.  We, therefore need to change our mindset and say, if we are saying free things someone must pay for it and please identify that person who can pay for all those free things, in education, health, railways and so on.  We need to be very sensible about the contributions, there is nothing for nothing.

Hon. Malaba, I think I have already answered you.  Bulawayo was the industrial hub of our country.  I always narrate the story that when we were growing up, people did not recognise Salisbury as a town, all our people, with some who never came back, flocked to Bulawayo because it was the town.  It was anchored on industry and the railway.  Now, we need to bring it back, but it will not happen through a miracle.  We have to do it step by step.  We have to identify investors and we find out what the investors want in terms of incentives in order for them to come back.  So, be nice to them, do not shout at them, they bring you jobs, money and skills.

However, the issue that arises, especially from the railways and any other parastatal or whether we are talking about ZISCO; those companies closed a long time ago but the people remain employed and the unpaid salary bill continue escalating, even though they are playing tsoro.  They have been playing tsoro for ten years now and yet it is still being accepted that they remain on the pay roll.  When we say let us restructure, Hon. Members here stand up and say, do not retrench anyone.  You mean that it is good business to remunerate someone who has not been working for 12 years, not one person, no production but remunerate them for playing tsoro. This is for the reason that we lack the courage to take decisions which are business-like.  Any person who is running a business knows that if they are not making money, they close the business.  Hon. Speaker Sir, I want us to understand that.

The stories about buying in South Africa and so on, especially about the wagons, from my understanding, the wagons came from China.  I may be mistaken.  There was an order which was placed in China a long time ago, of something else which is not even wagons, for which the goods were not delivered.  We then re-negotiated so that we get it through wagons and not what was originally ordered.

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