THE Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) yesterday painted a gloomy picture of the country’s economic situation, claiming several attempts by the churches to engage Finance minister Mthuli Ncube to proffer solutions to the country’s challenges had been ignored. BY VENERANDA LANGA This came out during a faith leaders’ breakfast meeting with the Felix Mhona-led Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance in Harare. ZCC revealed that its recent survey on the 2020 national budget performance exposed that people expected to see economic transformation during the transition from the late former President Robert Mugabe’s era to the new dispensation led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, but there was none. ZCC supervisor Ephraim Ngadziore said: “We churches have schools and hospitals that we run and we are surprised when we hear that the economy has achieved stability. “We are a failed leadership. There is no stability when children are not in class. Yesterday, they said Forms Three and Five should go back to school, but they did not, we know because we run schools. We cannot say the economy is stable when we do not know where we are heading to, yet after 1980, a lot of investment was put in education.” Ngadziore said school fees had gone up while some schools charged in foreign currency yet people earned Zimdollars, which exposed a serious mismatch. “Government must engage churches and union leaders so that we come up with a solution together. We wrote to Ncube twice and he responded by declining our invite. We are the major stakeholders in the education sector with 68% schools and there is need to ensure that children are learning,” he said. ZCC general-secretary Kenneth Mtata chided MPs, saying the electorate perceived them as gold diggers that were not interested in the welfare of people. “Many citizens are complaining that when MPs are in Parliament, they seek personal gain and not the interests of those that sent them to Parliament. We need to ensure that the 2021 national budget is responsive to the needs of the people,” Mtata said. ZCC economic justice and youth empowerment officer Admire Mutizwa said although their economic survey painted a gloomy picture which reflected macro-economic instability, there was a bit of stability achieved in the exchange rate which has steadied. “In 2020, citizens expected the budget to attend to the most pressing needs, particularly the deepening health crisis, inflation, exchange rate instability, extremely low salaries, poor service delivery, foreign currency shortages, and the fuel and electricity crisis,” he said. “Since 2018, we were agitated by austerity measures implemented in the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP). It seems we did not learn from the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) and we continue to have policies that have a huge social cost to society.” Mutizwa said the 2020 budget did not address developmental issues, adding: “We are saying that an economy should produce jobs, health delivery and service delivery for the dignity of citizens.