BULAWAYO – Police in Zimbabwe’s second largest city of
Bulawayo have in the past two days arrested scores of shop managers for allegedly hiking prices of basic commodities without approval from the government. 

 

Business leaders in the city told ZimOnline that mangers at some of the leading wholesale and retail chains were rounded up by police in a joint exercise that also involved members of the state’s spy Central Intelligence Organisation.
 
The managers who spent Wednesday night in police custody were still in custody by late Thursday afternoon.
 
“All managers of major businesses here are in detention and there is no sign of them being released,” said Eddie Cross, a businessman operating in Bulawayo and an economic adviser to the main faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party.

 

Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president Callisto Jokonya called the arrest a retrogressive step to efforts to halt Zimbabwe’s seven-year economic slide.

 

“We understand that the people that have arrested the managers are not instituted by the Ministry of Industry and International Trade. We don’t know yet who has authorised the arrests. It is very unfortunate. We are pursuing a wrong agenda,” he said.
 
Jokonya said senior officials at some of the country’s biggest retailers and wholesalers such as OK Zimbabwe, TM Supermarkets, RedStar, Jaggers, and Makro had confirmed that their managers had been picked up by the police.  

 

Both police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena and Industry and Trade Minister Obert Mpofu were not immediately available for comment on the matter.

 

But Mpofu has in the past threatened to crack down on businesses that unilaterally increase prices without permission from his department.
 
President Robert Mugabe’s government, battling to keep a lid on rising prices and runaway inflation, has banned business from hiking prices of selected basic goods without prior permission from the state.

 

More than 200 bakers and retailers were last month arrested for selling bread above the price set by the government. They were later released.

 

Skyrocketing prices are just one on a long list of problems bedevilling Zimbabwe in its seventh year of an economic meltdown described by the World Bank as the worst in the world outside a war zone.

 

The southern African country also has the world’s highest inflation rate of more than 1 000 percent, skyrocketing unemployment, shortages of foreign currency, food, fuel, essential medicines and increasing poverty levels. - ZimOnline