Harare - The opposition MDC, led by former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, has expressed fear that the recruitment of more army personnel by Zanu-PF is a ploy by the ruling party to bolster its terror machinery ahead of the 2018 elections.
The Zimbabwe National Army has been flighting adverts calling for youths between the ages of 18 and 22 to go for recruitment exercises at various barracks around the country.
In a statement on Tuesday, MDC-T national spokesperson Obert Gutu said the nationwide military recruitment exercise by the ZNA was irrational considering that government was currently struggling to pay salaries for its workers timeously.
"As a peace-loving social democratic political party, the MDC is also alarmed by the fact that the ongoing massive army recruitment exercise is deliberately targeted at building the Zanu PF regime's 'war arsenal' in preparation for the 2018 elections," he said.
Gutu said the Zanu-PF government was known for unleashing its security apparatus each time it faced possible defeat at national elections.
He said Zanu-PF had done the same during the June 2008 presidential election run-off when it unleashed soldiers and other security operatives in both urban and rural areas which resulted in an orgy of violence which saw hundreds of civilians murdered while women were raped and homesteads were set ablaze.
"Because the Zanu-PF regime is sensing a crushing and humiliating electoral defeat in 2018, it is already re-tooling and sharpening its instruments of terror, thuggery and brutality. Once again, the MDC would like to call upon SADC,the AU and even the United Nations to keep a close eye on the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe," he said.
Gutu said it was senseless to add more personnel to an already bloated civil service as revealed by a recent audit by auditors Ernst and Young.
"In fact,this audit revealed that there are no less than 75,000 ghost workers on the civil service payroll. Most, if not all,of these ghost workers are actually Zanu-PF activists who are conveniently given the job title 'ward or youth officers'," he said.
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa is on record saying that more than 80 percent of government revenue was going towards salaries.
African News Agency