Civil Servants Should Earn US$100 Regardless Of Position To Deal With Wage Bill: Misihairabwi-Mushonga

Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, an MDC-T legislator, yesterday called on the government to review civil servants’ salaries. She reportedly appealed to the government to avoid overburdening the poor with excessive taxation but instead, put the tax burden on the rich. She said this in the National Assembly while contributing to a motion in reply to the President Speech’s. Misihairabwi- Mushonga  said,

What happened as we went into the Inclusive Government, as we gave time for Hon. Biti to breathe before moving forward is, we actually made a decision and said, it does not matter whether you are a President, Minister or a sweeper.  We generally are saying everybody earns US$100.00 a month.  Madam Speaker, if we are going to deal with the wage bill, we may have to do something as radical as that so that we allow Treasury to only deal with a particular sum of money for a period of six to seven months as they begin to stabilise.  The issue that we have right now around the wage bill that we have and the salaries that we have in the parastatals is unsustainable.  We cannot continue doing that thing and if this budget does not come back with something around how we are dealing with the wage bill, we will continue to be in the state that we are in.

          We are not saying let us make the decisions about who we are, cutting out but  let us make sure that the wage bill and salaries are basically normalised to a situation of US$100.00 – that is what most economies do when they hit a particular crisis

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