Harare  - A month before a second round of presidential elections Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government Wednesday announced a wide-ranging package of free state assistance to begin immediately.

Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi said more people would be given free education and healthcare, social welfare and pension payments would be increased, food-for-work programmes in rural areas had been reintroduced and that civil servants' salaries were being "reviewed," according to the state-controlled Herald newspaper.

For example, the fund used to provide free drugs to the poor would be increased "from the current 20 trillion Zimbabwe dollars (about 400,00 US) to 1.5 quadrillion Zimbabwe dollars (about 3 million US)," Mimbengegwi said.

The government would also provide fuel to the state-owned public bus company, state railways "and all other transport operators," and would "provide resources" for the purchase of buses to take civil servants to work as well as issue free maize seed and fertilizer.

The newspaper said the handouts by the government were "to cushion its citizens from illegal sanctions-induced economic hardships," and were "part of government's relentless efforts to safeguard its citizens from hunger, poverty and disease."

Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai face each other in a second-round run-off presidential election on June 27. Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Tsvangirai won more votes than Mugabe in the first round on March 27, but less than the 50 per cent needed for outright victory.

Zimbabwe is experiencing a dramatic economic decline, with inflation estimated at about 1 million percent and the Zimbabwe dollars slumping by about 50 percent in a week to about 600,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars to the US dollar.

Economists say the collapse is being accelerated by the unrestrained printing of money by an effectively bankrupt regime.

"This package is all to do with vote buying," said Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the MDC.

"They will give a few cosmetic handouts to mislead the people and carry on printing money. This is the government which is responsible for unemployment, for the impoverishment of the people and are at the centre of the economic meltdown."

Tsvangirai said yesterday the number of people who had been killed in a wave of violence against opposition supporters since the March elections had risen above 50.

Human rights groups say Mugabe's ZANU(PF) party is responsible for nearly all the violence. (dpa)