Government calls an emergency meeting with civil servants

Meanwhile, the government has called for an emergency meeting with civil servants after they threatened to strike if demands for a 150 percent pay increase were not met. Media reports said the government had offered civil servants an increase of about 40 percent. Last month cabinet ministers and parliamentarians were awarded pay hikes of up to 300 percent. "We feel there is no justification for government to say they cannot give us 150 percent salary increases when they awarded ministers 237 percent," a spokesperson for the teachers' association, the largest of the government workers' unions, was quoted as saying. In October this year, inflation in Zimbabwe reached a record high of 70 percent.