Harare – The Zimbabwe Government on Wednesday announced a salary increment for its workers to cushion the effect of rising cost of living.
Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister, Sekai Nzenza, said at a news conference that the government had offered a cost of living adjustment of 400 million RTGS dollars.
Nzenza said this would be across board for all members of the public service with effect from April 1.
The increment came after protracted negotiations between government and workers, resulting in at some point this year teachers briefly downing tools.
He said government would again review salaries of workers in June in line with the cost of living.
Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube, said the increment put the salary of its lowest paid worker at par with the poverty datum line currently pegged at 600 RTGS dollars.
According to him, the latest salary increase does not change the ratio of government wage bill to the national budget, as salaries continue to take up 90 per cent of the budget.
He, however, said government will continue to guard against having more funds going towards civil servants salaries so that more money would be channeled towards capital expenditure.
Chairman of the Public Service Commission, Vincent Hungwe, said government would continue to work towards provision of non-monetary incentives to workers in order to continuously improve their working conditions.
He also said government was working on clearing medical insurance and social security debts for its workers.
Zimbabwe has experienced an increase in prices of most basic commodities in recent weeks, with businesses citing the falling exchange rate of the local currency to the dollar on the inter-bank market.
Since the introduction of the inter-bank foreign exchange market on Feb. 22, the local currency had remained steady at 2.50 to the dollar until recently when it plunged to 3 dollars to the greenback.
This is its biggest fall since the introduction of the inter-bank market.
Parallel market rates are hovering around 4.2 RTGS dollars to a dollar. (Xinhua/NAN)