Zimbabwe banks open over holidays

People want to get cash out for the festive season

Banks in Zimbabwe will remain open on Christmas Day and Boxing Day to allow people to change temporary currency into new banknotes before 31 December.

Central Bank Governor Gideon Gono made the announcement after introducing higher denomination notes last week in a bid to tackle serious cash shortages.

But the move has failed to reduce the long bank queues of recent weeks.

The country is already suffering from rampant inflation, mass unemployment and shortages of fuel and basic goods.

Critics of President Robert Mugabe accuse him of allowing the economy to go to ruin but he has remained defiant, blaming the problems on a Western plot to oust him from power.

Sleeping in queues

Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, told the BBC it was hoped the queues would disappear within a day after the higher notes were introduced last week.

I was supposed to go on holiday, but I'm still around because I can't get cash ZCTU's Lovemore Matombo In pictures: Rural hardship

But this had not been the case and people are still sleeping outside banks in the hope of getting cash before Christmas, he said.

"Tomorrow is Christmas day and still people are queuing throughout the country," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

"I was supposed to go on holiday, but I'm still around because I can't get cash."

Mr Gono said the problem stemmed from banks wanting to deal with business clients first.

"The focus of the banking operations on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday would be to attend to the requirements of individuals rather than corporates," he told Zimbabwe's state-run Sunday Mail newspaper.

Notes worth 250,000, 500,000 and 750,000 Zimbabwean dollars entered circulation last Thursday.

The 200,000 dollar bill is being phased out by 31 December, despite only being introduced in July.

Earlier this month, correspondents say a single match stick cost about Z$3,000.

Zimbabwe has the highest level of inflation in the world at more than 8,000%.