Zimbabwe slashes public service jobs

ZIMBABWE’s government planned to abolish almost half the jobs in the agriculture department, a government official said on Wednesday, as President Robert Mugabe’s administration struggles to pay soldiers, police, teachers and other public service employees.

The country, which spends 82% of its national annual budget on wages, said on Monday that it would no longer hire new public workers.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Paddy Zhanda said his office was seeking to prevent the shedding of about 8,000 jobs following a decision by the Public Service Commission.

Zhanda said the department had offered an alternative plan that would cut wages but save jobs, because dismissing staff could affect agriculture at a time when the sector was struggling to recover from the worst drought in a quarter century.

The state-run Herald newspaper reported on Wednesday that the commission had notified the agriculture ministry on July 29 that 8,252 posts out of 19,235 had been scrapped with immediate effect.

In March 2015, Harare carried out an audit of its government workforce but has not made the results public. An audit by private consultants carried out in 2010 showed that up to 70,000 “ghost workers” were on the payroll.

There are more than 300,000 employees in the government, according to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, a number that does not include the army, air force, police and prisons.