SUGAR-COATING THE HIGH COST OF LIVING WITH CIVIL SERVICE SALARY INCREMENTS
Dr Cosmas Musumali, Secretary General and First Vice-President of the Socialist Party writes:
The announcement of the 12% pay rise for civil servants was timed to sugar-coat the bitter pill of fuel price hikes that the Zambian masses have to swallow a day later.
Of course our Zambia civil servants urgently needed serious consideration. Over the past 5 years, they have had only a nominal 12 per cent pay rise and well over 50 per cent loss of value in earnings due to inflation.
It was therefore a desparate situation for the average government employee. The news of a 12 per cent pay increase and a 15 per cent increase in the rate of transport allowance was therefore highly welcomed by all the 16 trade unions in the civil service.
However the celebrations of the pay rise were cut short by a bombshell of fuel price increases of 20 to 29 per cent for petrol and diesel respectively.
And this is not the end of the story. Soon, increased electricity tariffs will be announced whose net impact would be devastating for the average household and small-scale entrepreneur with or without access to electricity.
The cost of living will escalate and poverty eradication can only be a pipedream.
The explanation for all these seemingly contradictory policy interventions is simple: the UPND in opposition lied to Zambians about the need for lower fuel prices, lower electricity tariffs and lower fertiliser prises. The UPND in power is quickly reneging on these electoral promises. It is said that lies have short legs – and indeed those short legs get even shorter when confronted with the real politik of policy implementation.
The petroleum subsector in Zambia is murky, inherently corrupt and cartel like in behaviour. Without cleaning the mess that has been there for decades, it is impossible to come up with the true cost of service. At the end of the day it is a farce that is being displayed under the pretext of attaining a cost reflective pricing.
Similarly, ZESCO – our main power utility – has been the cash cow for successive governments for decades. A truly, independent cost of service study has delayed for years. Behind all this delay is a purposeful strategy to continue allowing the ruling political elite exploit the masses that are already bleeding under heavy residential tariffs.
Fortunately the majority Zambians are quickly seeing through the lies and deceitfulness. The UPND government can no longer be trusted on the basis of its empty electoral promises and new promises. It has been sugar-coating on almost all topics critical to the livelihoods of the masses of our people such as free education, peasant agriculture and now the cost of fuel and electricity.
It is pure betrayal of the voters that had invested that much hope in the UPND.
The Socialist Party, through its President Fred M’membe, had said it before that the PF and UPND were “Siamese twins” and that there would only be cosmetic but not transformational change with the UPND replacing the PF. We still stand to be proved wrong!
December 17, 2021