Mugabe boosts blacks’ pay

Press, 7 December 1981, Page 8

Mugabe boosts blacks’ pay

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister (Mr Robert Mugabe) has announced economic measures, including significant boosts in minimum wages,. in a bid to cut the huge disparity between the salaries of white and black workers in the country. Zimbabwe’s black workers earn on average 39 times less than white workers. To reduce that gap Mr Mugabe said that minimum wages for more than half the country’s workforce would be increased 23.6 per cent to 66 per cent. The announcements, which amount to a main economic

policy statement, indicate that he intends gradually to alter the economy from one built on cheap labour and squalid living for 90 per cent of the people to one based on a more equitable sharing of the country’s impressive industrial base and natural resources. Businessmen and farmers, who will pay the increased wages, have criticised the announcement. But economists in Zimbabwe see the Government’s economic moves as a careful and wellplanned milestone. Government spending on housing, pensions, transport and education will not be

increased right away, as Zimbabwe’s economic growth has dropped from 14 per cent last year to an estimated 6 per cent this year. Mr Mugabe said that he would move swiftly on measures concerning rural areas, where 75 per cent of the country's 7.5 million people live. This sector scratches out a subsistence from overcrowding and undeveloped black reserves. The Government also announced plans to redistribute white-held lands to 165,000 black families. The money for this programme, which implies com-

pensation for white landowners, will come from the 51600 M in international aid and loans that Zimbabwe received earlier this year. Under the rural development scheme, electricity, water and roads will be extended into rural areas, and centres to provide facilities to surrounding areas will be set up. The scheme, unlike Mr Mugabe’s other programmes, must be achieved quickly because urban workers earn about six times more than peasant farmers, observers say. That disparity could cause a huge influx into the cities.