There Is NO Salary Increment, OPEN YOUR EYES

Financial year 2016 – 2017 government gave the health sector and increment of 15% and education got 0% but inflation still hit everyone on the shore regardless.
The said increment is technical and not practical. why so? In actual sense the Government has not increased anyone’s salary in any practical way in terms of living standards especially buying power.

The only way that one can say there has been a salary increase is when the increase beats the inflation rate. Zambia experience almost 20% inflation last year. To increase a salaries, the increment % has to be higher than 20%. Anything less than that is not a salary increase but upped buying power.
Hypothetically speaking I get paid K1000 and inflation is 20% meaning the K1000 has the purchasing power of K800.

So if I get a salary increment of 10% of K1000, it adds only K100 worth of purchasing power and I end up with K1000 that has a purchasing power of K900 which is still below K1000.

So my salary has not increased, but been adjusted to cover the loss in purchasing power from the 20% inflation. To increase a salary, the % increase has to be higher than inflation. In this case the increase of 25% against a 20% inflation rate will equate to a 5% increase.

Conclusively, the government has not increased the salaries of civil servants in the education sector and neither have they properly adjusted the salaries against inflation from the past years.

Pastor Hamlet Mwanza