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Harare - Zimbabwe will not shut down its bankrupt state
airline, an official said on Wednesday, and is seeking foreign partners to
rescue the debt-ridden service after it was grounded by a series of crippling
strikes that saw it lose thousands of customers.
Air Zimbabwe's collapse is blamed on mismanagement and three
crippling pilot strikes in the past 10 months over unpaid salaries and
allowances.
The airline resumed flights on Friday after the latest
strike by its 49 pilots. Officials said one weekend flight carried only one
passenger. They estimated it would take six months to restore confidence.
Thousands of passengers have been stranded this year and
have not received refunds.
But Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi said the government-owned
airline is the country's symbolic flag carrier and cannot be dismantled without
bruising the southern African nation's ego and damaging Zimbabwe's image
worldwide.
To abandon the troubled airline, he wrote in an opinion
piece in the state-run Herald newspaper on Wednesday, "is self-destructive
and morally wrong."
He said the airline owed at least $100m and was looking for
another $500m to upgrade its aging fleet. He said the recently ended strike is
estimated to have cost $8m, and also had a severe impact on tourism revenues.
"This is not readily available, especially when the
airline cannot even pay wages and salaries," Mzembi wrote.
He also said the bloated airline has 184 employees for each
of its eight aircraft, compared to a world average of 80 staff for each
aircraft.
He said other African airlines had outside help from
"serious, cash-rich and committed" investors.
But loyalists of President Robert Mugabe's party have
sharply opposed hiring white or expatriate managers to run loss-making state
enterprises. The government imposed rules that require all businesses to be
majority black-owned.
