{"id":7424,"date":"2014-03-20T15:51:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T15:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=7424"},"modified":"2014-03-20T15:51:50","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T15:51:50","slug":"mugabe-caps-zimbabwes-fat-cat-state-salaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=7424","title":{"rendered":"Mugabe caps Zimbabwe’s ‘fat cat’ state salaries"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Robert-Mugabe\"<\/a>
Robert-Mugabe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

President Robert Mugabe has moved to ease public anger in Zimbabwe by capping the pay of “fat cat” managers of state-owned companies.<\/p>\n

The 90-year-old had faced growing pressure to act after it was revealed that many executives were being paid up to $500,000 (\u00a3300,000) a month.<\/p>\n

His government is to cap the pay of the bosses of parastatals to a maximum of $72,000 a year, including benefits.<\/p>\n

The average monthly wage for government employees in Zimbabwe is $370 a month.<\/p>\n

‘Salarygate’<\/strong><\/p>\n

“In the public eye, these exorbitant salaries and allowances are not only corrupt but also obscene,” Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said.<\/p>\n

“The public’s outrage is justified.”<\/p>\n

Mr Chinamasa published a list of the salaries paid by all 180 state-owned firms and councils, which he said showed many “fat cat” executives were evading tax by taking lower basic pay then supplementing it with exorbitant benefits that were not taxed.<\/p>\n

The BBC’s Brian Hungwe in the capital, Harare, says the scandal, dubbed “salarygate”, broke at the end of last year.<\/p>\n

It was revealed that the head of the struggling Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) was taking home a $37,050 a month, yet the state-controlled broadcaster had failed to pay its workers for more than six months last year.<\/p>\n

Other cases came to light – one health insurance company that covers government employees was paying its chief executive a monthly salary of $230,000 while also giving him monthly benefit payments of $305,499.<\/p>\n

Our reporter says MPs from all parties have been outraged by the scandal and parliament has already set up a team to probe the issue.<\/p>\n

The government said it intends to recover money that was used to pay salaries that were unjustified but many questions remain over the investigation.<\/p>\n

James Maridadi, an opposition MP with the Movement for Democratic Change, accused several government officials of being linked to the scandal and said this was “just the beginning”.<\/p>\n

Zimbabwe has recovered from hyperinflation and its economic free-fall of several years ago, but its economy is still fragile and it does not have its own currency – it uses eight others as legal tender.<\/p>\n

The country is widely seen as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, with Transparency International’s latest corruption perceptions index ranking it at 157 out of 177 countries<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source : BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Robert Mugabe has moved to ease public anger in Zimbabwe by capping the pay of “fat cat” managers of state-owned companies. The 90-year-old had faced growing pressure to act after it was revealed that many executives were being paid up to $500,000 (\u00a3300,000) a month. His government is to cap the pay of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":7020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-7424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}