Zimbabwe's Central Bank Governor Urges Distressed Firms to Occupy Ministers' Offices
Gideon Gono pledged to support the occupation of state offices of Finance Minister Tendai Biti and Industry Minister Welshman Ncube
Company executives, who attended a heated meeting Thursday with the governor and representatives of Cabs Building Society which is disbursing the funds, said Gono urged them to take swift action against the ministers saying it was taking too long for them to access the funds Zimbabwe’s central bank governor Gideon Gono says executives of struggling companies in the country's second biggest city, Bulawayo, failing to access a state-sanctioned US$40 million financial bail-out facility, should mobilize and raid some ministers’ offices, Occupy Wall Street style, to force them to release the funds. Company executives, who attended a heated meeting Thursday with the governor and representatives of Cabs Building Society which is disbursing the funds, said Gono urged them to take swift action against the ministers saying it was taking too long for them to access the funds. Gono pledged to support them if they occupied the two ministers' offices who mooted the bail out package, launched amid fanfare in the city last October. The executives are angry at the slow progress in the disbursement of the funds with only three unnamed companies having benefited so far while more than 30 firms are facing closure due to lack of capital. More than 80 companies shutdown in Bulawayo in 2010 leaving 20,000 people jobless as a result of liquidity constraints. Bulisani Ncube, Bulawayo branch general manager of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, said politicians are derailing the disbursement of funds. Gono, Biti and Ncube were not reachable for comment. Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. It is fighting back against what it calls the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and "aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future."