Business will have to bear the blame

03 May, 2019 - 00:05 0 Views
Business will have to bear the blame The price of bread has been increased to RTGS$3.50

The ManicaPost

Tafara Shumba Post Correspondent
The disproportionate hike of prices of goods and services in the country has triggered alarm among the citizens, forcing government to react.

Prices are wantonly being increased on a daily basis without justifiable whys and wherefores. As a result, the salaries of workers which were recently reviewed up to catch up with the runaway prices of basic goods and services have been grosslyeroded.

As prices rise, workers also demand a pay rise and continuous salary increment for workers works at cross purpose with the national vision of economic regeneration.

The excessive price hikes and distortions border on sabotage. The dirty tactic is meant to whip up the emotions of the ordinary person against the government, which unfortunately is always at the end of the chain of blame. They have caused an artificial crisis with a net objective of politically profiteer government detractors.

The unaffordability of goods and services has become a political push card for the opposition political parties. The security services, as reported by the Minister of Home Affairs, Ambassador Cain Matema recently, have got wind of conspiracies to capitalise on the restless citizens to stage riotous demonstrations meant to unconstitutionally oust the government.

Obviously when this happens, government will respond in equal measure. Just like in the previous attempts to cause civil unrest, lives will be lost again. Of course it will be a necessary evil to lose a few lives to save thousands. It will be unfortunate for the business to be implicated as the source of the upheaval. History will judge them harshly as the root of whatever will happen. The business might not be in the know of the repercussions of the scheme they are wittingly or unwittingly involving themselves in.

What the businesses fail to understand is that they will be the prime casualty of the civil unrests they are trying to trigger. They need to be reminded that demonstrators have a tendency of looting. It will not be

President Mnangagwa’s businesses that will be ransacked. Government will be forced to apply minimum force to subdue the unrest, all in a bid toprotect the exposed businesses. Businesses are chopping a branch they are sitting on.

The New Dispensation had tried its best to veer off from the confrontational relationship with business that existed in the previous dispensation. A cordial relationship was in the making with government creating a very conducive environment for business to operate. It was never the intention of the New

Dispensation to control prices. It is sad that such goodwill is being abused.
People have a tendency to abuse good things extended to them by government. They misconstrue such goodness for weakness. President Emmerson Mnangagwa opened up the democratic space which has been shut for a while. The opposition can now campaign freely in areas they never set foot in the previous dispensation.

The opening of the democratic space resulted in over hundred political parties and 23 presidential candidates participating freely in the July 2018 polls. That abundant democracy was grossly abused, leading to 1 August 2018 and 14-15 January 2019 incidents.

Here is another opportunity being molested by business. The businesses will have to blame themselves if government resort to price controls. As a people’s government, it cannot continue to fold hands while the rights of the governed are trampled upon. The time will come, and soon it will, when government will do cost benefit analysis ofprice controls and free market approaches.

Business must know that it will not take time for government to revoke the operating licences which they are abusing. It is within the provisions of the law for government to do so.
Government put in place some protectionist policies to encourage growth of the local business. If that gesture is not being appreciated, the protectionist policies should not continue to exist. More goods must be removed from the Open General Import Licence until the local business sector stops profiteering and arbitrage. The removal of protectionist privileges will force the business to price their goods and services competitively and fairly.

One way to counter this unethical business practices is the revival of the National Basic Commodities Supply Enhancement Programme (Bacossi to the people), in which rural and urban dwellers will receive groceries at heavily subsidised prices.

The business must learn from what happened in the mass public transport system recently. Government had to intervene and launched the Urban Mass Transportation System through theintroduction of the Zimbabwe United Passenger Company buses. It was after the commuter omnibus operators had short-changed the commuting public for some time.

Bus fares could be hiked anyhow and at times three times per day. The kombi operators had become willing tools in opposition parties’ plot to antagonise the Government. They could withdraw their kombis every time the opposition called for a stay-away.

Most of the time, the workforce did not wittingly heed the so-called stay away but only did so because there was no transport to ferry them. This is how the commuter omnibus operators had connived with those who had a political agenda to achieve.
Government had to come to the rescue of the citizens and that intervention will force most of the operators out of the road. They have learnt the hard way. The business will also learn the hard way if they fail to learn the simple way from the precedence before them.

 

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