Can't cut spending because we're out of money

In the Alice in Zimbabweland of Robert Mugabe the ghosts of workers (not) present, rule;

Japhet Moyo, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) secretary general, told The Zimbabwean that while cutting the wage bill was a noble idea, government did not have the capacity to fund the process.

“It would seem government wants to lay off workers without compensation, because it is clear that there is no money to give to the affected civil servants. You don’t just wake up in the morning and decide to retrench because a huge amount of resources are needed to do so,” he said.

The number of civil servants has almost doubled recently;

The civil service ballooned from 315,000 in 2009 to about 554,000 in 2014.

Of the $4.1 billion 2015 national budget $3.32 billion (81 percent) goes to employments costs ....

In 2009 the Zimbabwean Central Bank suspended their dollar after monthly inflation was estimated to have reached 80 million per cent. So the option of printing money to pay civil servants no longer exists, and they don't bother to show up at work.

“There are thousands of ghost workers and undeserving Zanu (PF) activists inflating the wage bill. These are the ones that government must look at first before talking of bona fide public employees. There is a lot of hypocrisy in this whole thing,” added Moyo.