Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube has ruled out a significant salary increment for civil servants.
Ncube said the government has more pressing issues that it has to attend to and will only be able to give its workers cushioning allowances periodically. Said Ncube:
We are not going to agree on a once-off agreement, but we will follow last year’s trend, where we were cushioning them whenever there is inflation.
We will (have) multiple negotiations as we did when we gave them cushioning allowance in May, salary increment and another cushion in July.
We do have some urgent issues like climate change, food security and energy and also we are mobilising resources for Command Agriculture. We are also seized with issuing licences to independent energy suppliers to produce energy.
The Civil Service Apex Council met government representatives on Friday last week, and again on Monday this week for negotiations on salary adjustments. The meeting ended with no agreement between the two sides.