The impact of a new civil service strike this week which has coincided with a maize price increase

Zimbabwe braced itself on Wednesday for the impact of a maize price increase which coincided with a wage strike announced by the country’s civil servants. According to government officials, trade unions and other experts, the situation which some feared could lead to public unrest, is directly linked to a shortage of funds in government coffers. An IMF package Analysts said the country was pinning its hopes on how soon the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would start releasing the first tranche of a US $200 million arrangement facility. An IMF spokesman in Washington said its talks with the Zimbabwe government on the issue were now completed and that a decision by the IMF board could be expected in coming days once the agreement had been reviewed. Nurses, teachers join strike The civil servants, however, announced on Wednesday that they would go on strike. A representative of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) told IRIN that they had decided on the action after the government of President Robert Mugabe agreed on Tuesday to grant them only a 5 percent increase, instead of the 25 percent increase demanded. Givemore Masongorere, president of the Public Services Association, told a news conference in the capital Harare that some 140,000 workers, including school teachers and state nurses, had gone on strike. Citing the growing cost of living in Zimbabwe, he said that civil servants had been negotiating an increase with the government since February last year. Government constrained An economist with the Confederation of Zimbabwean industries said: “The government is quite constrained as far as funds are concerned, so they probably had to settle for a lower percentage. It is a difficult situation all round.” The economist, who requested anonymity, said the confederation had long sought an increase in the maize price and said the 20 percent increase with immediate effect announced on Tuesday by Commerce Minister Nathan Shamuyarira was not sufficient to meet the rising costs of the country’s millers. “With costs rising all round, you can be sure they will ask for another increase and so far the government has only promised another 20 percent increase in three months time,” he said. Millers seek still higher prices The millers had sought a 62 percent hike. But in remarks carried by the Zimbabwe media, Shamuyarira said he was concerned at the impact on the public at large: “The government gave careful consideration to this request, taking into account the hard economic conditions facing our society at present. We believe that these price levels will be affordable to the majority of our people.” Earlier in the week maize producers told IRIN maize price increases were overdue because they had to meet costs of imported chemicals and fertiliser. The government daily, ‘The Herald’, said this week small-scale millers had lost over US $1 million in revenue since they stopped production at the beginning of the month in protest at the fact that they had to pay the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) more for maize than the industrial millers represented by the Millers Association of Zimbabwe. Titus Ncube, chairman of smaller Grain Millers Association, was quoted as saying their members had been charged the equivalent of US $122.5 per tonne for maize compared to the US $75 per tonne charged by the GMB to the industrial millers. A grim outlook “What this gets down is that costs are simply rising across the board in Zimbabwe,” the economist said. Recalling that inflation had more than doubled from 24 percent last year to 53 percent last month, he added: “The income of consumers in Zimbabwe has been so seriously eroded that they can only afford the basics. People can no longer afford even to save for a motor car, let alone a new home.” If the situation endured, he concluded: “One simply cannot rule out the possibility of social upheavals as happened in January 1997 when we had the destruction of property and the army was called in to quell the violence. “We hope it will not come to that, but certainly given the current situation, anything can happen in Zimbabwe.”