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total workers - these data do indicate that there remained a significant shortage of Zambian artisans in many of the highly skilled craft occupations, both in the mining sector and in other areas of the economy.

It should be recalled, however, that approximately one half of all non-citizen workers have long-term residence status, and are not 'targets' for localisation in the same way as are other non-citizen workers. The manpower survey indicated that ovar 4,000 of the 6,000 or so expatriates with work permits, as opposed to residence permits, were in the professiontl and technical occupational group. This proportion (70 per cent) compares with only 15 per cent of those with residence permits who fell into this occupational group (Table 10). This occupational concentration is also to be expected on the basis of the educational background of non-resident - expatriates 55 per cent of whom were reported to have university degrees, with a further 20 per cent possessing professional qualifications of various kinds. (GRZ 1983: Table 10.7). Thus, most of those non-Zambians shown in professional jobs in Table 9 were expatriates who could be localised as more qualified Zambians become available, whereas those with long-term resident status tended to work in the lower-level craft, primary teaching, clerical, farming and nursing occupations.

Thus, the recent sharp declines in the number and proportions of non-citizens employed are not so strongly indicative of an increased availability of Zambian skills as they might first appear. Considerable numbers of expatriates have left the country owing to the declining purchasing power of the Kwacha. Those who have left the public sector have often not - been replaced sometimes because of an inability to attract new staff, and sometimes because of a wish to focus the impact of expenditure cuts on non-citizen, rather than Zambian staff. One result has been a significant increase in the number of vacancies amongst professional and technical grades in all sectors of the economy. Unfortunately, comprehensive data on vacancies in the formal se tor are not available. The 1983 manpower survey did not collect such information, nor do the quarterly surveys of employment and earnings run by the CSO. Nevertheless, interviews with senior managers in all sectors of the economy during 1986 confirmed that an increase in vacancy rates was very widely experienced (UNDP 1986).

As for the public sector, more concrete information is available. The civil service grew fairly rapidly by, on average, almost 5 per cent per year over the eight years prior to 1983. Payroll costs accounted, during this period, for a growing proportion of public expenditures. In circumstances of increasing financial stringency, expendl.tures on supporting services, (such as transport and materials) were reduced to levels incompatible with efficiency. In 1984 the government, at the behest of the World Bank and the IMF and as part of the conditions associated with extending new loan facilities to Zambia, agreed to introduce a freeze on recruitment to the administrative cadre of the public service. Thus, a sharp increase in the vacancy rate occurred, and by 1985 it was estimated that some 10,000 of the 77,000 established posts in the civil service were vacant (UNDP 1986:155). In 1986 GRZ went further, in announcing its intention to make no new appointments to the public service without the special authority of the Cabinet Office, and to