Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 92, reportedly spent at least $36m on foreign and domestic trips in the first 10 months of 2016. According to Zimbabwe Independent, this piled pressure on his cash-strapped government, which “is failing to buy painkillers for public hospitals”.
The report said the nonagenarian’s trips outweighed expenditure by ministries such as Macro-economic Planning and Investment Promotion
, Energy and Power Development, Transport and Infrastructure Development and Industry and Commerce as well as the Parliament of Zimbabwe.
Mugabe is currently on a month-long vacation. He left Harare for the Far East last month with his entire family and a large entourage of security aides.
News Day reported on Friday, however, that the veteran leader had apparently established a fresh base in the Middle East “from which he will continue to gallivant, bleeding an already desperately broke government currently struggling to pay workers on time”.
Quoting sources, the report said that Mugabe was expected to travel “extensively in that region”, and “visit Africa for a number of meetings as well as China using Air Zimbabwe”. Read more on this here.