Outcry As PSC Withdraws Bus Service

There is widespread gnashing of teeth among workers from the independent Commissions and
parastatals after the Public Service Commission announced that they will no longer be allowed to
board its buses starting this month.
In a notice circulated mid-June among the buses social media groups, the PSC said staff and students
from the five independent commissions as well as departments and subsidiaries of the Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting Services would be affected. Ministry of Information, Publicity and
Broadcasting Services bodies affected include the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, the
Zimbabwe Media Commission, the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe and New Ziana.
Also affected is staff from the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), National Peace and Reconciliation
Commission (NPRC), Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC), Zimbabwe Lands Commission (ZLC), and
the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).The PSC advised the affected workers to exhaust their tap
card balances and surrender them to the bus conductors by June 30.
PSC secretary Dr Tsitsi Choruma was not available for a comment. Many of the affected members
are dismayed at the development, which they say would see them failing to report for work.
The development comes at a time when public sector workers are reeling from the impact of
exchange control volatility which has rendered their RTGS salary component literally unusable
against galloping prices of commodities in shops around the country. Zimbabwe’s food inflation shot
up by 104 percent between May and June largely blamed on the decline in the local currency but
non-food inflation rose by 49.5 percent.
Annual inflation more than doubled from 86.5 percent in May to 175.5 percent in June while overall
month-on-month inflation shot up from 15.7 percent to 74.5 percent in June according to the
national statistical agency, ZimStat.
New Ziana