Zimbabwe blog: suffering rises with the prices in Zimbabwe
Updated on 29 July 2008
Nothing's straightforward in Zimbabwe, as our blogger "Helen" discovers when she tries to pay an electricity bill.
A sign on the wall in the local government owned electricity supply office this week reads:
"Multiply prices on your statement by one million dollars."
Standing in a queue which is moving painfully slowly, it is dark and quiet as there is no electricity.
This is a typical Monday: the electricity went off before 5am and if we are lucky it will come back on in 15 or 16 hours time, at around 9pm in the evening.
'Multiply prices on your statement by one million dollars'
It's not just residential areas which are without electricity three or four times a week, it's the entire town: all the businesses, two hospitals, ten schools and scores of factories.
When I finally get to the front of the queue I explain to the teller that I haven't had a statement for four months so I don't know how much to pay.
Electricity is billed by the unit and meters are normally read and accounts hand delivered in the urban and residential areas every month.
"We are no longer sending statements," the teller states. "It is too expensive to print and deliver accounts."
"So how much do I owe?" I ask.
"I don't know," she responds. "The electricity is off so I can't check your account on the computer."
"How much shall I pay then?"
"Just pay what you think," she replies, "one or two hundred billion dollars will be enough for a private residence."
I hand over a hundred billion dollars and she writes me a receipt for one hundred thousand dollars. When I query the receipt she points in a bored manner at the legend on the wall: "multiply by a million to get the right figure."
The hundred billion dollars is represented by two brown fifty billion dollar notes which are printed with the words "Special Agro-Cheque" on the front. No one seems to know what the 'Agro' reference has to do with the money which has a limited validity. Issued on the 15 May 2008, these notes are set to expire on the 31 December.
One hundred billion dollars is the maximum amount of cash I am allowed to withdraw from the bank a day and it is currently worth less than twenty British pence.
On the other side of town I try to get a prescription for a penicillin based antibiotic at a pharmacy, only to be told that the amount for a seven day course of tablets is two trillion dollars.
The pharmacy, like all outlets, won't accept a cheque. To draw enough cash out of the bank to meet the two trillion dollar price tag will mean standing in bank queues for 20 working days - by which time the price will have dramatically increased.
I phone around and find another pharmacy selling the same drug for 1.6 trillion dollars. By the time I arrive there an hour later, the price has gone up to three trillion dollars. It seems they are making the prices up as they go along. And while they do, the levels of pain and suffering have reached almost unbearable levels.
- 'Helen'
