Members of Parliament have requested that they receive their Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in United States dollars as a way to preserve value, as the RTGS$ is shedding value on a daily basis.
Warren Park MP, Shakespeare Hamauswa (MDC Alliance) raised a point of privilege to ask Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube to consider the proposal. He said:
Since the minister of Finance and Economic Development is in the House, I would like to request that our CDF should be converted to the US dollar using the inter-bank rate.
This is important because every time we come to submit our quotations when we go back to procure material for our projects, we normally discover that the rate which was used when we were given invoices has changed.
This means that the people we lead no longer have faith in us as their representatives.
In response, deputy National Assembly Speaker Tsitsi Gezi who was standing in for Speaker Jacob Mudenda said:
…you are raising a very important issue but I am sorry, it is not a point of privilege. You can raise that issue with your chief whips.
The fund was first introduced in 2010 by the then Finance Minister Tendai Biti. The Fund is however prone to abuse as there is no mechanism in place to see that it would be used for what it is supposed.