BY BLESSED MHLANGA

SENIOR doctors at public hospitals have accused government of committing a silent genocide by refusing to accede to their junior counterparts’ salary demands which has culminated in a two-month-long strike.

In a letter dated October 24 and addressed to Health minister Obadiah Moyo, Senior Hospital Doctors Association (SHDA) said the stand-off was likely to drag on as long as the government continues to persecute junior doctors and cast a blind eye to the current incapacitation at health institutions.

In their letter copied to President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the doctors said there was no justification for government to refuse to pay them United States dollar-benchmarked salaries when the cost of most services and goods were pegged in the same currency.

“Goods and services are pegged in US dollars, making our demand reasonable in order to sustain service delivery,” the letter read.

“It is our view that the government is currently committing a silent genocide by casting a blind eye to the current incapacitation in hospitals. May we remind you of the constitutional mandate of the government as spelt out in section 29 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe of 2013.”

The two-month-long strike by members of the Zimbabwe Hospitals Doctors’ Association (ZHDA) has effectively forced hospitals to shut down.

“As doctors, we work as a team, we need junior and middle-level doctors to be able to function. We are against victimisation of our junior colleagues through hearings and threats of suspensions, yet they are finding it difficult to come to work because of poor earnings. Their incapacitation must be resolved,” the letter added.

Government has withheld salaries of all doctors who have been on strike, saying they will not be paid unless they return to work.

“The SHDA finds the withholding of the paltry salaries to be a joke. If there was a salary to talk about, we would have reason to worry. We hope you shall use the withheld cumulative amounts to capacitate hospitals,” SHDA said.

Nurses have been allowed to work flexible hours by coming to work at least two days a week to ensure that they avoid incapacitation, but SHDA said this arrangement was not good for the health delivery system.

“The flexi hours for nurses and other hospital staff system must be abolished with immediate effect as it is detrimental to patient care, causing avoidable morbidity and mortality. No hospital can function and be able to offer services under such arrangements. Senior doctors are not returning to work in flexi-hours system,” the letter read.

BY SIBONGINKOSI MAPHOSA / PRAISEMORE SITHOLE

INDONESIAN ambassador to Zimbabwe, Juniarta Sastrawan and his delegation yesterday met Bulawayo Metropolitan Affairs minister Judith Ncube to deliberate on the Asian country’s plans to resuscitate and capacitate the struggling National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ).

Sastrawan held a closed-door meeting with Ncube at the NRZ Bulawayo main station offices before a tour of the premises.

After the meeting, Sastrawan told NewsDay that his country wanted to revive NRZ, describing the parastatal as a low-hanging fruit because it has its own machinery and manpower.

“My mission here is to strengthen the economic co-operation and the railway industry is one of the low-hanging fruits that I can do. I want to see how we can partner with Zimbabwe and contribute to the blueprint of the economic reform,” he said.

Sastrawan has been an adviser to his country’s Transport and Infrastructure minister and is well-versed in transport and infrastructure planning.

“We are making a more detailed plan on capacity-building. Hopefully, by next year, we can start something, a concrete plan on the capacity-building that we have,” he said.

Sastrawan also said they were not in the country only as investors, but also as partners with NRZ.

NRZ board chairperson Martin Dinha said they were excited to engage Indonesia in the resuscitation of the parastatal, a move that comes at a time the country is facing a serious economic meltdown.

“We have been having active engagements for the past months with the Indonesian ambassador and we are happy our engagements are yielding positive results, as evidenced by this event that we are having today,” he said.

Dinha said their delegation visited Indonesia in preparation for a long-standing relationship in industrial infrastructural development during the Africa Indonesia summit.

“We went to Indonesia last month to attend the Africa-Indonesia summit and during that summit, we mapped a way forward on infrastructural development in Zimbabwe precisely,” he said.

NRZ general manager Lewis Mukwada said the parastatal boasts of having the second largest railway workshop in the southern region after South Africa.

“NRZ has huge and fantastic facilities that we can work on from end to end, meaning that it’s not that we can have capacity-building on the operation of railway, but also on the production of railing stock,” Sastrawan said.

Indonesia’s interests in partnering Zimbabwe come after government recently cancelled NRZ’s US$400 million contract with Diaspora Infrastructure Development Group (DIDG)/Transnet under unclear circumstances.

The US$400 million deal was meant to cover only the first phase of NRZ’s restoration.

To get back on track, NRZ needs US$2 billion in investment, according to an Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe assessment report.

Last year, as part of a temporary agreement, DIDG delivered 13 locomotives, 200 wagons and six passenger coaches on a lease arrangement to the NRZ.

In cancelling the deal, government gave inconsistent excuses and retendered.

BY FARAI MATIASHE

THE Harare City Council (HCC) is lobbying government to allow it to collect rates in foreign currency from business and corporates that have licences to trade in foreign currency as part of initiatives to strengthen service delivery.

The facility has been granted to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, where businesses that are trading in multi-currencies remit their taxes in the same currency, in which the goods have been sold.

Speaking on the state of the city yesterday, Harare mayor Herbert Gomba said the move would enable them to procure plant and equipment that require foreign currency.

“The City of Harare appreciates the economic challenges our residents are facing, hence we have tried to ensure that our rates and tariffs remain sub-economic,” he said.

“We have, however, explored other revenue generation streams, which we hope to implement next year. Council is also engaging government in a bid to secure authority to charge certain ratepayers, services and products in forex. The city is targeting such businesses to pay for services in foreign currency, as well as those in the diaspora who might want to purchase residential stands, among others,” he said.

“This will allow council to invest in service delivery initiatives such as procurement of plant and equipment. The above is not peculiar to Harare alone, because some fast-food outlets designated tourism facilities are allowed to charge in forex.”

Gomba said they were proposing a 20% infrastructure development tax on property developers when they connect their projects to existing infrastructure, which will give the city money dedicated on infrastructure development.

The mayor called on parliamentarians and councils to work hand-in-hand to push the government to review the current tax laws.

To recover the estimated $800 million owed by ratepayers, Gomba said council was lobbying Parliament to make legislative reforms so as to give them garnishing powers, where they would start using force to get money from individuals and corporates.

He said plans were underway to procure mobile modular water treatment plants to cater for the disadvantaged areas such as Sentosa, which have had perennial water challenges.

BY EVERSON MUSHAVA

PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa’s embattled government has reportedly resorted to unorthodox means to force its impoverished workers to continue reporting for duty after refusing to pay them United States dollar-benchmarked salaries.

Apex Council spokesperson David Dzatsunga told NewsDay on Monday that government was using coercive tactics, such as work attendance registers, to identify workers who fail to report for duty after the public workers declared incapacitation.

The intimidatory tactics include marking of registers and using councillors who threaten to report absent workers in rural areas, especially teachers.

“Clearly, workers are largely incapacitated, but it is unfortunate that there are reports of intimidation served through the administrative machinery by way of registers. Consequently, workers just find some and any means to report for duty,” Dzatsunga said.

Civil servants declared incapacitation on October 15, a day after they submitted a demand to their employer in a National Joint Negotiating Council meeting that their salaries be pegged in US dollar value and paid at the current interbank rate.

The least paid government worker is earning about $1 023, an amount only enough to buy US$50 on the black market at a time the country is experiencing a grave economic meltdown characterised by skyrocketing inflation, shortages of fuel as well as constant plummeting of the local currency to the US dollar.

This fall in value of the local currency has forced teachers and other public sector workers to introduce a two-day working week.

Last Friday, Finance minister Mthuli Ncube revealed he was unable to meet their US-benchmarked demands, promising another cushioning allowance for workers, before payment of bonuses next month.

Dzatsunga said his organisation would meet today to review the situation and map a way forward in light of the threats.

“We are going … to meet tomorrow (today) as Apex to consider some options,” he said

NewsDay has been informed that some councillors had been moving around rural schools threatening to report teachers who fail to turn up for work.

The Zanu PF councillors have been targeting headmasters, forcing them to mark attendance registers and report absentee teachers to them so that they could report direct to Mnangagwa.

The threats came after the councillors met the President in Harare last week.

“Councillors came from meeting with the President and they claimed they were told to call his office if any teacher is not working,” a teacher who requested anonymity said.

“Headmasters are demanding that anyone who cannot attend work for any reason, including incapacitation, should submit their names. In addition, we are required to dress formally up to 4pm, otherwise the headmasters will submit our names to the councillors, who will report to President Mnangagwa.”

The teachers said they had reported the matter to their unions.

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Takavafira Zhou confirmed receiving the reports, and said he had since advised the teachers to put the complaints in writing for them to act.

BY VENERANDA LANGA

THE central bank yesterday said it would introduce new currency notes and coins in the next two weeks, as it moves to restore the domestic currency which fell victim to hyperinflation and was dumped in 2009.

The new money, comprising $5 notes and $2 coins, will be introduced gradually to ease shortages of the bond note while ensuring that it does not drive up inflation, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya said.

It will circulate alongside the bond notes and coins introduced in 2016 as a surrogate of the US dollar, which the country was then mainly using in-lieu of
its own currency.

The central bank unexpectedly reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar on June 24, ending a decade of dollarisation.

“We thought of being conservative (in introducing low denomination notes and coins) and we will graduate with time,” Mangudya told journalists after a two-day Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Harare.

It was the first meeting of the MPC since its appointment by Finance minister Mthuli Ncube last month.

Zimbabwe is grappling with its worst economic crisis in a decade, marked by shortages of foreign exchange, fuel and medicines, three-digit inflation and 18-hour daily power cuts.

The central bank boss also confirmed that the economy is expected to shrink by 6,5% this year, while month-to-month inflation will be between 10% and 12% by year end.

While year-on-year inflation was at 353,32% in September, government suspended in August publication of the figures when it topped 176%.

Mangudya, however, declined to give the name of the currency, only opting to say it would be nameless and would complement the already existing bond notes and coins in order to increase the cash circulation.

“We already have bond coins and notes in circulation, as well as $2 and $5 bond notes, but now we are going to have the already circulating bond coins and notes and the $2 new currency coins and $5 new currency notes,” Mangudya said.

“They are going to be used interchangeably at 1:1 rate and the new currency will not be in our bond notes (form), they will be called $2 or $5,” he said.

Asked to produce the specimens for the new $2 coins, and $5 notes, Mangudya said there were some legal processes that needed to be satisfied first before the specimens were made public.

“We shall give you the specimen later because whatever new currency you are introducing needs to be first gazetted through a statutory instrument (SI), and then after gazetting we do the necessary advertising. We cannot do that before the legal instruments are put in place. We need the legal reforms first,” he said.

Mangudya said he would increase the cash supply and revise the withdrawal limits upwards so that people do not have to pay premiums for their cash.

“Precisely, I would say that within the next two weeks, we will be having the cash — and cash does not mean increase in inflation,” he said.

Asked to explain why he was introducing small denominations of notes in an economy already hit by cash shortages and inflation, Mangudya said: “For now we will do the $2 notes, $5 notes and $2 coins so that they do not depreciate as soon as possible.”

Mangudya said the MPC had noted that the increase in reserve money by 80% during the first eight months of 2019 compared to December 2018 position had triggered instability in the exchange rate and resulted in the increase of prices of most goods and services.

He said there was need to contain money supply growth within levels that will ensure exchange rate stability and inflation reduction.

Last week, Mangudya was quizzed by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, led by Tendai Biti, on revelations that about 10 individuals in the country controlled the US dollar market in the country.

Yesterday, he, however, said 50% of the country’s deposits were owned by 50 corporates.

“So 50% of the $19 billion money supply is in the hands of 50 corporates and so it means we are predominantly a poor country,” he said.

“We must not allow such a thing to happen because at the end of the day, prices will affect everyone in the economy. We are not targeting individuals, we are targeting those with sufficient energy to influence the market.”

On curbing illicit financial deals and massive profiteering by EcoCash agents, Mangudya said the RBZ’s Financial Intelligence Unit had already been deployed, adding that the behaviour of bureaux de change would also be monitored.

On reports that the Chinese government had expended funds for the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport expansion after he released money to Sakunda Holdings on a 1:1 rate to the US dollar, Mangudya said the issue was based on hearsay.

The RBZ governor said the total harnessed funds since he introduced the interbank exchange rate towards the end of last year was US$1,3 billion, being purchases by customers.

He said most of the money was being channelled towards purchases of fuel, adding that the equilibrium in the interbank exchange rate would be a level of 5 to 8 to the United States dollar.

Mangudya said the MPC has noted with concern the continued inflationary pressures in the economy, projected to recede in the outlook period as attested by the recent decline in monthly inflation from 39,26% in June 2019 to 18,07% in August and further to 17,72% in September 2019.

— Additional reporting by Reuters

By Harriet Chikandiwa

Flamboyant businessman Wicknell Chivayo, who is facing a charge of bribery after his company, Intratrek, transferred $10 000 to former Zimbabwe Power Company board chairperson Stanley Kazhanje’s personal bank account to try to influence the outcome of a tender process, is set to stand trial on November 18, 2019.

Chivayo and Kazhanje appeared before Harare provincial magistrate Francis Mapfumo, who remanded them to November 18 for trial.

Allegations are that in September 2013, ZPC invited bids for the construction of the Gwanda solar project and Chivayo, through Intratrek Zimbabwe, expressed interest.
In October 2015, the ZPC board held a meeting with Kazhanje as board chairperson.

During the meeting, Kazhanje allegedly directed that the ZPC management should award the tender to Intratrek.

It is averred that in the same month, the contract was signed between ZPC management and Intratrek without the latter providing a bank guarantee.

Chivayo then reportedly transferred $10 000 bribe money from an Intratrek bank account to Kazhanje’s account.

The prosecution alleged that Kazhanje received the money knowing fully well that it was bribe money to influence the ZPC board into picking Intratrek for the project.

BY PHYLLIS MBANJE IN HYDERABAD, INDIA

RESEARCHERS at the tuberculosis (TB) conference in India have unveiled an experimental new vaccine which could protect millions of people from getting infected.

Dubbed a game-changer by the researchers, the initiative conducted by GlaxoSmithKline, gives fresh hope to the fight against TB, which remains one of the worst infectious diseases in the world.

The experimental vaccine results showed 50% protection for the candidates who took part. Studies were carried out in Kenya, South Africa and Zambia.

“We are one step closer to a vaccine for TB,” International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), scientific director Paula Fujiwara said yesterday. The Union is convener of the 50th Union World Conference on Lung Health.

Fujiwara said a vaccine is the ultimate prevention tool and urged stakeholders to move the trial into its final phase. “We simultaneously need to be doing all we can to prevent tuberculosis with medications that we already have at our disposal.”

TB is a preventable, treatable and curable, yet last year it killed 1,5 million people. It is also estimated that a quarter of the global population has latent TB infection, of whom approximately 10% will develop active pulmonary TB disease.

Currently, multi-drug resistant strains of TB are emerging and spreading globally, and the only available TB vaccine, BCG, does not provide proven and consistent protection in adults in TB-endemic countries.

Without a more effective vaccine, it will not be possible to achieve the World Health Organisation target of decreasing the number of new cases by 90% and the number of TB deaths by 95% between 2015 and 2035. Zimbabwe is among countries with a high TB burden.

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, The Union Zimbabwe director Christopher Zishiri said currently the country is giving the BCG vaccine to newborn children to prevent tuberculosis. “This has been ongoing for a long time. It prevents severe forms of TB such as that which affects the brain and the whole blood system in children.” Zimbabwe has done well on universal coverage of all children with BCG.

Newsday

PROPHET Passion Java is a man mired deep in controversy; his life is a bewildering case of extreme ironies that make many people question whether he fits the moral compass of a cleric.Snippets of him dancing, singing along to dirty lyrics and partying with non-Christians have inundated the internet of late.

However, despite all the mysterious activities, one thing has become clear and that is the fact that the showy prophet has a profound interest in the arts and music in particular although it is uncertain why.

Two weeks ago, in scenes fit for a Hollywood script, he stormed Harare from the United States for the local leg of his 32nd birthday celebrations and as anticipated, the welcome event was attended by celebrities from across the spectrum including Chillspot Records.

In turn, the man, who has been influencing a lot of pop culture including street lingo, did not disappoint as he splashed cash in what was to become the hallmark of his presence during his brief stay in the country.

While in Harare, he hosted Twabam Nyama, a music concert where revellers got to watch different Zimdancehall acts, ate free meat and drink all sorts of liquids for free at Alex Sports Club. Not a single word from the Bible was shared. Instead, the event ended in chaos.

He may have made up for it on the next day when he held a night of worship at 7 Arts Theatre with Zimpraise Choir singing before he took to the podium to preach.

That is the schedule of a man strangely enjoying the best of both worlds, that is, Christianity and the secular side.Whatever his intentions, Java’s interest in Zimdancehall has started raising eyebrows and that is because he seems too vested for someone not benefitting anything.

Recently, he shot down reports that he had given Chillspot a hefty pay out to sign star chanter Enzo Ishall under his Passion Java Records (PJR), but the lie failed to hold after it later emerged that he also signed South Africa-based Buffalo Soulja.

When questioned over his benevolence to artistes, Java claimed that he was just offering a helping hand, but it is the publicity around the assistance that has made many view the man as a culture vulture seeking to amass prominence by associating with famous names in music circles.

Further fuelling this insinuation is the anomaly of having a perceived man of the cloth not only dining with artistes pursuing a secular message but also bankrolling them.
“I don’t like church people, I don’t like people who pretend to be holy, I don’t want people who try to walk like a god, I want people who are themselves,” says Java in a YouTube video posted in 2015.

While launching PJR back then, he said the label, which came as a God-inspired vision in 2003, was meant to “remove all these things” caused by secular music.
“One thing about Passion Java Records, I met Lil Wayne in Brooklyn in the States and I told him I am opening a recording company that is going to remove all these things that you are doing because Jesus Christ is taking over,” he said.

“With Passion Java Records we are taking over, it might be in hip hop, sungura (and) in whatever music.”Back then he worked with hip hop’s renowned producer Take Fizzo and gospel rapper Mudiwa Hood among others, but now he has switched to Zimdancehall chanters who have proved more popular among urbanites.

If done in a sincere manner, this indeed could be a masterstroke for the man of the cloth.However, his current approach where they sing him praises raises more questions than answers as he now appears to have immersed himself too deep into the culture, ostensibly aborting the soul winning mission.

“How can you get them to where you are if you are not where they are? You have to be wise like a snake and be gentle like a dove in order to win souls for Christ,” he told journalists at Twabam Nyama.

“The first miracle Jesus performed was changing water into wine so that he could attract drunkards and preach to them. People need to understand that times are changing. We used to hold crusades with tents outside but things have changed and people have to follow the season,” Java said.

While it may be very hard to state exactly what Java’s end goal is, some clerics like Walter Magaya and T Freddy have been accused of using musicians to attract attention to their projects.

The former is said to attract more people to his church through live music shows while the later jump-started his gospel career after funding artistes.
Ultimately, only time will tell if Java is just a culture vulture or a genuine man on a divine assignment of soul winning.

BY FIDELITY MHLANGA

ZIMBABWEan chartered accountants (CAs) are in a fix as to which data to use for hyperinflation financial reporting (IAS 29) following the suspension of inflation data by government.

As such accountants are now considering the use of exchange rate in place of the general price index in the restatement of financial statements or both.

This follows a communique from the Public Accountants and Auditors Board (PAAB) a fortnight ago allowing preparers of financial statements to exercise professional judgment in considering the presentation of historical financial information as supplementary information which would be inflation-adjusted in terms of the requirements of IAS 29.

The IAS 29 lists factors that indicate an economy is in a hyperinflationary cycle. One of the indicators of hyperinflation arises when cumulative inflation over a three-year period approaches, or is in excess of 100%.

Presenting at the hyperinflation reporting workshop yesterday Chartered Accountants Academy chief executive Anesu Daka highlighted the pros of using the general price index which include that it is understood to be linked to inflation and also reflects change in general purchasing power.

Daka pointed out that delays in publishing monthly data, suspension of year-on-year inflation figures militate against the use of general price index.He further opined that prices of goods and services were not moving at the same rate as inflation as such it was difficult to employ the index.

According to Daka, using the exchange rate was noble as data is available on a daily basis, as well prices in Zimbabwe move in line with the exchange rate.He, however, said practitioners were wary of using the exchange rate as an index as it was not commonly used in normal cases.

“The ministry of finance said it will not be publishing year-on-year inflation. So what will happen? In one sentence of your financial statement you will say the finance ministry has stopped announcing year-on-year inflation figures. And them on another hand you say from my own calculation year-on-year inflation is like this. While government has stopped announcing figures people are using the month-on-month to calculate the year-on-year inflation,” Daka said.

Icaz past president Martin Makaya proposed that the profession develop a more comprehensive framework detailing how to arrive at the ideal index to use for reporting.
“We are a complex market for that reason we suggest to have the profession lead us in calculating the adjustment factor to use. Our institute should develop some comprehensive framework to use and say this is what we have developed ,” he said.

Another accountant concurred with Makaya on the need for the profession to come with up a proper index to use in the restatement of financial statements.

“We want to believe that as professional bodies we should sit down and come up with an index that we use. You guys need to stop to be political,” he said.

Another accountant weighed in saying there was need to use a common index across the board to allow policy consistency. “If you working on a listed company on the stock exchange, for instance Edgars cannot use price index and Truthworths use the exchange rate. It’s not good for investors,” he said.

Zimbabwe is listed on countries with projected three-year cumulative inflation rates exceeding 100% by the International Practices Task Force of the Centre for Audit Quality that monitors the status of “highly inflationary” countries. The Task Force’s criteria for identifying such countries are similar to those for identifying “hyperinflationary economies” under IAS 29.

This is not the first time Zimbabwe has adopted hyperinflation reporting standards. In 2008 it resorted to the same before abandoning it after the adoption of the multi-currency system. Zimstats stopped publicising the inflation data then due to none availability of price information.