By Staff Reporter
Opposition FDD leader Edith Nawakwi has described the average 10 percent salary increments awarded to civil servants as just “shinga butter”, saying the increment will be swallowed up by high electricity, fuel and mealie meal prices occasioned by the late delivery of fertilizer.
Speaking with Daily Revelation on the proposed salary increments by the government taking effect in January, 2023, Nawakwi described the 10 percent as a paltry figure considering the high cost of living, and what she described as late and chaotic delivery of fertilizer to small scale farmers.
“It’s just shinga butter. Just putting butter on the faces of civil servants,” Nawakwi said, adding that she foresaw a poor harvest from the 2022-23 farming season, which would compound the cost of living further. “More money without goods is inflation. That is what we learnt ourselves. I don’t understand these Hichilenomics.”
Nawakwi charged that President Hichilema was always coming up with anything that would help him change the headlines whenever he found himself in a tight corner, saying the main issue in the country right now was the late delivery of farming inputs and the high cost of living which would affect all the Zambians, describing civil servants as just a fraction of the beneficiaries despite rural dwellers being the most afflicted with poverty.
“And what budget line is he going to use for these salary increments? (Finance minister Dr) Situmbeko Musokotwane just presented the budget, maybe I didn’t read the budget properly. If I didn’t, I apologise. So are they going to pay these salaries from the supplementary budget? I hear that the Nyala-Nakonde road will be done from the supplementary budget. But have they even finished the current budget? So you are already using extra means before you even conclude the budget?” Nawakwi asked.
Nawakwi said the total public work force was currently under one million and that already 50 percent of the current expenditure was made of personal emoluments, wondering if this was something the government had agreed with the IMF.
“Right now as we talk, people in cooperatives are being told to share two bags of fertilizer each…30 people are now being told to share eight bags. Clearly there will be massive hunger. So as someone who is in the informal sector the question is what is in store for the small scale farmer? You can’t buy popularity by buying one sector of the community,” said Nawakwi. “As President you know that he has failed. When he fails in one area, he goes to fetch ECL’s account. It’s all about changing the headline. The current issue today is there is no fertilizer so you have to find a menu to please people. If salaries are being increased today, were they provided for in the budget? Is that part of the arrangement with IMF?”
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