When it comes to the Ministry of Labour, I was in the shoe business in Bulawayo and I was a director of a major shoe company. We employed three thousand people and we were producing two pairs of shoes per day per employee. In China it is 12, why and what is the difference? In China the minimum wage is $36 and in Zimbabwe it is $250. You cannot compete if those are the realities of your business. Dealing with that is the Ministry of Labour’s issue. We are struggling with the Harare City Council where the Chief Executive, the Town Clerk was getting $30 thousand per month, a sweeper getting $420 and municipal policemen getting $1 100 and constable on the ZRP gets $350, what kind of crazy salaries are they?
When you talk about negotiating a reduction in the salaries, believe me, it is like declaring war. If we had a true forum where we could discuss these issues and reach agreement between labour, businesses and Government, believe me, we could make progress. That has got nothing to do with the Ministry of Industry, that is for the Ministry of Labour. We have got EMA. Do you know what a nightmare EMA is? If you speak to any businessman who is involved in mining industry, I have a small scale miner who is a friend of mine, the EMA closed him down because of some of the problems of pollution on is site. They are charging him $5 000 per day until he fixes the problem. He just closed the mine, he could not afford the $5 000 a day.
If you take the City of Harare, there is not one sewerage plant in the City of Harare or City of Chitungwiza that is working. For every one of those failures, EMA charges City of Harare and Chitungwiza thousands of dollars a day in fines. Why, what for, what on earth are they achieving? I believe Madam Speaker, unless you bring these institutions under control and you manage them from a cost effective point of view, we are going nowhere. Nowhere in the world can you see this kind of thing.
When you take NSSA, how many businesses have closed in Zimbabwe because they did not pay NSSA on time and they were subject to a garnishing order on their accounts. We pay 8 percent to NSSA and it has accumulated $5 billion of income over the last 24 years and their total assets at the moment are $1. 2 billion. Where is the other $4 billion? NSSA is the most inefficient investor in Zimbabwe today. Look at the Beitbridge Hotel, $53 million and it is closed. Look at the hospital in Bulawayo, $250 million and it is closed. It has never functioned and yet NSSA continues to collect money from you and me and from the poorest people in the country and squanders the money. You had a look at the forensic audit of NSSA, it is litany of crime. Thirty percent of our cost of labour, our levies and fees, it is NSSA, Aids Levy, Standard Association, ZIMDEF and you can go on and on. In other words, if we scrap those levies, we could reduce our cost of labour by 30 percent.
Madam Speaker, look at ZINARA, it is collecting $200 million a year from everybody. What are they doing with it? The small bit of road from Harare to the airport (17kms) cost us $83 million, which is $4.8 million a kilometre. These guys simply do not know what they are doing. – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] – We discussed it yesterday. When the Chief Executive Officer of ZINARA bought 40 graders from China, the specifications were so designed that only one supplier could deliver the graders and the cost was $16 million. Seven million dollars of that was for a snow plough which is on the front of the grader. We are a mockery of the world – I mean, who on earth would do a thing like that? – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] – I do not know how many of those graders are working today. I do not see any of them operating in the rural areas.
Continued next page
(2521 VIEWS)
