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Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe: Central bank doubles salaries for youth militia

By Brian Ncube

BULAWAYO - Zimbabwe's central bank has doubled salaries for youth militia squads employed to monitor prices in shops to Z$1.2 million per month, a figure more than 10 times the monthly salaries of teachers and doctors, sources told ZimOnline.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono, who claims the country's runaway inflation is largely fueled by profiteering businesses, has since last year employed about 5 000 graduates of the government's controversial national youth service training programme on a campaign to ensure shops obey state controls on prices of basic goods.

The youth militias - known more for committing political violence and persecuting opposition supporters - are assisted by uniformed police who in recent months have arrested several business executives and shop managers found selling basic goods above prices gazetted by the state.

"We do not get pay slips. We get our money direct from the Reserve Bank, where we are made to sign some forms bearing our names. We renewed our contracts at the beginning of the year and we will be here doing the duties up to the end of March," said one member of the youth militia, who agreed to talk to ZimOnline on condition he was not named.

Ministry of Youth officials referred questions on the matter to Gono who would not deny or confirm whether youths salaries had been doubled but said the central bank would strive to ensure price control teams earned enough money to keep them out of corruption.

Gono said: "We make sure that they do not indulge in corruption because that is what we are fighting as a nation. I cannot disclose their salaries because that is a matter of personal privacy."

Before the latest increase two weeks ago the youths, who have always earned more than the average civil servant including police officers helping them to monitor prices, were earning $600 000 per month.

The lowest paid teacher earns about $84 000 per month, a figure way below the Z$460 000 that the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe says a family of five needs per month to survive. Junior state doctors earn about $600 000 per month.

Teachers at some government schools have since last week been on strike, turning up in class but refusing to conduct lessons, to protest their poor salaries. Doctors have boycotted work since last December pressing the government to hike their salaries and improve working conditions.

Nurses have since joined doctors on strike, further straining a public health sector that is barely functional at the best of times due to under-funding, drugs shortage and an overload of HIV/AIDS cases. Scores of patients are said to have died in the past weeks because of otherwise treatable illness if doctors were at work.

More state workers are threatening to strike unless President Robert Mugabe and his government increase salaries to cushion them against inflation which according to the latest figures released by the Central Statistical Office is pegged at 1 593.6 percent, the highest in the world.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the largest labour federation in the country, has also given the government until February 23 to address pay grievances of doctors, teachers and that it fixes the bleeding economy or face a general strike by workers across the country.

Churches and human rights organisations accuse government youth militias of hunting down supporters of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party, beating, raping, torturing and sometimes murdering them as punishment for not backing the government.

The government denies its youth brigades persecute the opposition and also rejects charges of human rights violations in the country.