(NEWZIMBABE) Protesters demand Biti's resignation

Protesters demand Biti's resignation
Demo ... Protesters mass outside Finance Minister Tendai Biti's Harare offices
27/06/2011 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter

A COUPLE of hundred placard-waving protesters calling themselves war veterans massed outside the offices of Finance Minister Tendai Biti on Monday to demand better pay for civil servants.

The street protest was the second at Biti’s office in as many weeks after a group calling itself the Anti-Sanctions Trust tried to disrupt his meeting with a visiting IMF delegation on June 15.

Several of the placards being paraded on Monday called on Biti to resign, just a week after he snubbed President Robert Mugabe’s call for him to award pay increases to the country’s 230,000 public sector workers. Biti maintains that the country is broke.

“President Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara have sat down and agreed that civil servants must be awarded a salary increase and they have all been defied by one man. Who does he think he is? He should go,” protest leader Fanuel Matsenga told the demonstrators.

The "war veterans", many of them women, blocked the car park entrance for Biti’s office, while a small delegation went up to the sixth floor hoping to confront the minister who did not emerge to meet them.

Several journalists said they had been threatened by the group.

One placard described Biti as an “IMF puppet”, another claimed “President Mugabe represents Zimbabweans – Biti represents EU and the West” and another banner announced: “War Veterans Want a New Finance Minister in Zimbabwe”.

Biti, who had a petrol bomb thrown at his house last month, says he will not be intimidated by Mugabe’s supporters.

Mugabe promised civil servants in April that their salaries, which average US$200 per month, would be reviewed in June -- but was immediately defied by Biti who said treasury was unable to fund pay increases.