The Zimbabwe top leaders alone have spent a staggering US$ 45.5 million or 1.2% of the national budget, on foreign travel alone in January to September 2011.
“All the three GNU principals and Cabinet have developed a penchant for jet setting” reported Gift Phiri of Daily News. Although I would say this is not something Zimbabwe’s ruling elite has “developed” in the last few years. Even back in the 1990s when the country implementing savage economic cuts in line with WB reform programmes, Mugabe continued to spend millions of dollars on foreign travel. People used to ask when the last time he “visited” Zimbabwe! He is still globe trotting today, even with the national economy in total melt down!
This government has been paying highly qualified civil servants an allowance of US$300 a month (even the regime is ashamed to call it a salary) because it has no money. It is an outrage that Mugabe should spend US$3 million – enough to pay 10 000 civil servants - on just one of his innumerable globe trotting trips! Finance Minister Tendai Biti is right to call this outrage a “cancer”. A point sadly missed by Prime Minister Tsvangirai.
During Prime Minister’s question time Tsvangirai justified Mugabe’s medical trips to Singapore on the dubious grounds that the nation must take care of its national leaders. Spending US$3 million goes far beyond living within one’s means because Mugabe did not need to take his usual entourage of cronies and hangers-on for yet another shopping spree.
None of Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance has ever succeeded in getting Mugabe and his cronies to rein in their extravagant spending. I compliment Minister Biti for trying; he is not likely to get very far given that his own MDC leader does not even understanding what he is doing!
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