Government spending more on travel than civil servants healthcare

By Alex Bell
09 December 2009

There has been renewed outrage over the unity government’s expenditure after it was revealed last week that it is spending more of the country’s money on travel than on healthcare.

The revelations were made during Finance Minister Tendai Biti’s budget speech in Parliament, where statistics showed that foreign travel by Robert Mugabe and his cabinet used nearly US$30 million of the US$126.4 million allocated for ministries’ expenses between January and October this year. This translates to nearly 5% of the government’s total expenditure of US$640.8 million up to October and far outshines the US$8.1 million spent on medical assistance for civil servants.
It is no surprise then that Finance Minister Biti said last week that he would cut foreign travel by government ministers in 2010. He said with effect from January 2010, business travel for ministers and their officials would be limited to allocated amounts which would be made available monthly. Biti also said there is widespread abuse of fuel and government vehicles by officials, a development that will see a special audit being conducted next year to establish the extent of this abuse.
A recent audit by the Auditor General Mildred Chiri revealed some senior government officials had accessed as much as 5 000 litres of fuel per month. Biti last week Biti said that starting in January a new framework would be in place to curb such abuse. In addition, government will put a cap on all foreign trips, after previous calls by treasury to limit unnecessary travelling fell on deaf ears.
“The disproportionate share of foreign travel amounting to US$28, 6 million to October 2009 is a detriment to overall service delivery. This is despite previous calls by Cabinet office and treasury for ministries to limit foreign business travel to only important and crucial meetings and conferences geared towards the promotion of national socio-economic recovery efforts,” he said.

Mugabe and his cronies have for years raided the government coffers for cross-continental trips, all under the guise of ‘government related travel’. Just last month Mugabe travelled to Rome for a United Nations food summit with an entourage of more than 60 people, including government ministers and reportedly some of their wives.

Biti’s determination to keep a tight rein on government spending is now likely to see him become the target for much anger by the more spend-thrift members of the coalition government. Already, some officials have started lashing out at Biti over his budget allocations. George Charamba, the ZANU PF permanent secretary in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity, on Monday said the allocations to the Ministry were inadequate, adding the allocations flew in the face of the Global Political Agreement (GPA).

“The budget has failed the constitutional rights and GPA obligations (of the government),” Charamba said.