Zimbabwe MP says you cannot compete when you pay an employee $250 a month and China pays $36

Then you take ZINWA and you speak to any farmer about ZIMRA.  I think it was raised this afternoon; our farmers cannot function where they are paying $12 a cubic meter for water.  You take all our municipalities but particularly people who irrigate, they cannot afford to pay this kind of fees.  – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] –  Madam Chair, what are these guys doing with the money.

When Parliament visited Tokwe/Mukosi dam, 18 Members of Parliament arrived in a bus at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon for an official inspection of the dam wall.  We could not find anybody on site.  I then went looking around and found a ZINARA engineer sitting in an air conditioned office without his shirt on and drinking a six pack of beer.  I pulled him out of his office and told him that we were on an official visit and that he should have been notified that we wanted to see the dam.  We went around and visited the dam.

 Members need to know that in 1998, when the Government issued a contract to Celine, to build the Tokwe-Mukosi dam, the price was $57 million dollars.  It now cost us $250 million, five times and what is the reason, an incompetent agency.   – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] –  So, what is going to be the price of water from Tokwe-Mukosi?  Who is going to be able to afford paying for water at that kind of price?  The litany just goes on.  The proposal to build a dam on the Gwaai-Shangani – that water will cost Bulawayo $3,80 a cubic meter.  At the moment we are paying 23 cents.  We cannot afford it but where is the sanity?

Then you also look at the cost of energy.  Already my colleague this afternoon has mentioned the high cost of petrol and diesel.   You tell me why we are paying the highest cost in the entire region, why?  What is the reason?  I have told some of my colleagues in the Committees that my view is it is corruption. – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] –  I believe that somebody with some organisation here is taking $500 million a year out of the fuel bill and every Zimbabwean pays this.  So, as long as you have got that kind of energy cost – look at this diesel project producing energy out of town here – one hundred megawatts of power.  Madam Chair, do you know that is consuming a million dollars worth of diesel a day.  The cost of electricity from that plant is 18 cents a kilowatt/hour.  The cost of energy from Kariba is 1.5 cents and that from South Africa is 14 cents while the cost of energy from Hwange Thermo Station is 8 cents.  The cost of energy from Cahorabasa is 4 cents.  Why are we generating electricity with diesel?  We are still paying foreign exchange for the imports!

We keep making what I call structural mistakes like this.  This is not an issue for a board under a Minister of Industry and Commerce.  This is an issue for the President’s office.  In my view, the ease of doing business programme which has been run from the President’s office, is the right place for it because if anybody in this country is going to be able to give an instruction to an individual line Ministry and make sure that it happens, believe me, it is the President’s office and it is not going to be a board.  I thank you.

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