THE Bank of Zambia (BoZ) has raised concern over failure by our civil servants to pay back loans which they are contracting, warning that abuse of payroll-based lending and off-payroll borrowing is threatening financial stability. According to Deputy Bank of Zambia Governor Dr Francis Chipimo, a recently conducted financial stability assessment showed that some public workers were obtaining credit not based on the payroll, often beyond permissible limits, through misrepresentation, non-disclosure of existing obligations, and borrowing from multiple institutions. In simple terms, civil servants are going to lending institutions to borrow money even when their payslips are already heavily deducted by other lenders. To achieve this, they lie about the obtaining situation and hide the true picture on their payslips...