Govt owes embassy staff $10 million

via Govt owes embassy staff $10 million – NewsDay Zimbabwe June 24, 2015 by Veneranda Langa

FINANCE and Economic Development secretary Willard Manungo was yesterday grilled by parliamentarians for underfunding Zimbabwe’s diplomatic missions most of which are reportedly in a deplorable state.

This was after Manungo told members of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs that as at end of May, foreign embassy staff were owed $10 million in salary arrears.

“We are two months behind in salary payments of foreign embassies at Zimbabwe’s 43 diplomatic missions,” Manungo said.

“The problem is we disburse salaries for foreign embassies directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their diplomatic missions, but we are now considering having everyone under the Salary Services Bureau so that we have a situation whereby all employment costs for domestic and foreign missions are processed from one point.”

Acting chairman of the committee Reuben Marumahoko said he did not see any logic in that directors of ministries were given new vehicles regularly and yet most of the country’s foreign mission staff were allocated old vehicles.

“When I went to Malawi recently on government business, the situation at the Zimbabwean embassy was so pathetic that they failed to offer me transport. I had to use commuter omnibuses from the meeting venue to the hotel. It seems you are servicing domestic needs and forgetting about keeping the image of our foreign missions,” Marumahoko said.

Manungo said his ministry was also failing to provide locally-based directors with vehicles as stipulated in their terms of conditions, adding about 100 directors were using public transport due to shortage of government vehicles.

“The problem is that employment costs are taking up the chunk of expenditures and all facets of the economy are suffering.
There are challenges as regards spreading of resources over the demands of the budget,” he said.

The committee said Manungo should sort out the problem as it was not clear how the unpaid embassy staff survived out of the country where it was illegal for them to do extra jobs.