Production time wasted in queues

TIME is money, so the old adage goes. Has anyone out there ever calculated how much the many queues for various commodities cost the nation, both at individual and national level? Individuals now

literally live in the queues.

We can also talk in terms of productivity loss and opportunity costs. In order to stand in the queues for four to five whole days every week you have to forego some productive activity.

The shortages of basics are also increasing the rate of HIV infection. Women and girls prostitute and compromise themselves to get the basics that are in short supply.

In order to get flour, cooking oil, sugar, meat and mealie meal some women have to prostitute themselves.

Zimbabweans must be the richest people on earth. Very rich in patience.

One day the Chronicle carried out a survey of the people’s opinions on the stayaway. They photographed three individuals on the front page allegedly giving their views. It later turned out that two of the photographed individuals happen to work for the Chronicle itself.

I am not a trained journalist, but is this how those guys were trained?

Fuel queues, inflation, load-shedding, coal and forex shortages and unavailability of basic commodities are more dangerous than an MDC or ZCTU-inspired stayaway.

If President Robert Mugabe were to continue ruining us for the next five years Zimbabwe would be turned into a desert. A graveyard of buried hope and potentialities.

Milton Njuzu Mandaza,