By Rungano Dzikira

Government has issued a stern warning to banking institutions that are swindling civil servants of their nostro payments, by unwilling or unable to speedily provide adequate facilities and transactional platforms to enable beneficiaries to access their USD $75 COVID-19 allowances.

In a statement, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development noted that treasury was not impressed with banking institutions engaging in malpractices which were derailing Government’s efforts to cushion its civil service from inflation.

“Treasury notes with concern and disappointment that some regulated banking institutions, in connivance with some major retailers, have conspired to limit or prevent beneficiaries of this scheme from accessing the full foreign currency value of their payments,” read the statement.

“This behaviour runs counter to the spirit and intentions of the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe’s, His Excellency, E.D Mnangagwa, when he made the offer to Civil Servants and Pensioners to pay these allowances in foreign currency, which are meant to provide an inflation hedge.

Treasury further accused banks for failing communicate adequately with civil servants and pensioners on the opening of Foreign Currency Accounts as they had agreed with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, and this has left many beneficiaries in the dark about the existence of new bank accounts.

“Some banks have not made any serious and visible efforts to issue suitable cards and deploy relevant and adequate supporting points of transaction equipment to enable the beneficiaries to use the cards to make payments for goods and services using the foreign currency-denominated cards.”

The Ministry strongly encouraged banks to urgently attend to all the anomalies in their banking systems which included, forcing clients to liquidate their USD allowances to RTGS, provision of FCA cards, provision of electronic platform services, and to immediately upgrade their domestic payments infrastructure to accommodate internet and other banking platforms in light of the increased need for “transactability” of the foreign currency allowances.

Additionally, banks were encouraged to immediately make widely available to the public, and more directly to their individual customers, information relating to the operation of the nostro accounts that have been operationalised for receiving the Covid-19 allowances.