BCC gobbles $2,1m in overtime

09 Sep, 2018 - 00:09 0 Views
BCC gobbles $2,1m in overtime Mr Winos Dube

The Sunday News

Bura chairperson Mr Winos Dube

Vusumuzi Dube, Municipal Reporter
BULAWAYO City Council employees are reportedly exploiting the local authority’s lax overtime procedure which has seen council, as at August, paying more than $2 million for overtime allowance.

Last year the local authority was faced with a similar situation where in the first eight months it had used $1,2 million for overtime allowances, a situation which saw council increase their yearly overtime allocation in their 2018 budget projection to $3 603 439.

However, according to the latest council report, the local authority is reportedly struggling to contain its overtime bill, with revelations that in the first eight months of the year the local authority has gobbled $2 175 798 an increase of more than $900 000.

In 2017 the local authority had budgeted $680 000 for overtime. According to the report, the chamber secretary’s department gobbled the most having used $1 213 595 to date with some of the justification for this high cumulative figure being overtime paid to staff employed in the traffic section working towards implementing traffic by-laws.

“Justification for overtime in chamber secretary department include for security: the overtime was as a result of staff shortages, and ad-hoc deployments requested by departments. Parking Meters: The overtime was paid for staff policing the roads outside their normal working hours and emergency services personnel on duty beyond their normal working hours.

“Mayoral chauffeurs were also on commuted overtime while the acting City Hall supervisor was on duty after normal working hours. In the financial services department, there was planned cleaning of Tower Block, Revenue Hall and Stores section over the weekends and month end receipting and bill delivery over the weekends,” reads part of the report.

In the health services department some of the justifications included; staff attending to refuse removal trucks on weekends, staff collecting refuse in the city centre on weekends, staff attending to burials on weekends, staff cleaning streets and public toilets on weekends, clinic staff working on weekends and fumigation of offices done after hours and on weekends.

“For the engineering services department justification was attending to persistent sewer chokes and collapses, working on breakdowns at water and waste water stations after hours and on weekends, attending to bulk pipe bursts and water leaks, damaged water steel pipes and plant breakdowns, attending to road reseals and overlays over weekends and working on burnt power supply transformer and cables.

“In the housing and community services department, overtime was paid to rangers controlling illegal soil excavations, poaching of firewood in and around the city, swimming pool staff attending to wedding receptions on weekends and council halls staff attending to weekend bookings,” reads the report.

The breakdown per department, according to the report, is chamber secretary department; $1 213 595, engineering services; $561 897, health services; $185 654, financial services $64 070, housing and community services; $146 378 and town clerk’s department paid $4 024 in overtime.

Both councillors and residents have in the past expressed concern over money spent by the local authority on overtime.
They have urged management to come up with strategies to reduce the wage bill.

Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association acting co-ordinator, Mr Emmanuel Ndlovu said the local authority had a lot of questions to answer rather than turning a blind eye on the matter.

“One major question that they will have to respond to is whether or not the spending on overtime is as a result of unauthorised employee absences or insufficiency of permanent staff? Whatever the case, if BCC continues on this fiscal course, it will soon plunge into an unavoidable crisis leading to draconian budget cuts and central government take-over of the city’s management.

“The city’s budget has a structural imbalance between spending commitment and anticipated revenues. It relies on unrealistic assumptions that mask the reality of the situation on the ground. That takes me to the issue of the recent hike on rates, BCC cannot rely on rates increases which will worsen the lives of residents who are suffering,” said Mr Ndlovu.

He said the local authority should seriously consider drastic spending cuts and setting priorities that will see them put service delivery ahead of everything else.

“One of the ways in which BCC can save money without harming service delivery would be to reduce or do away with the use of overtime by council employees thereby saving close to $3 million a year. It is sometimes even cheaper to hire additional entry level workers than to pay thousands to a highly paid senior employee.”

Bulawayo United Residents’ Association (Bura) chairman Mr Winos Dube said the figure was worrying but noted that there was a need to explore the root cause of this figure so as to address it and ensure residents’ monies are channelled towards key service delivery issues.

“Any company or organisation has to be worried when such an amount is directed towards just overtime, clearly something has to be done because we are talking about residents’ hard earned monies. Further, this could be a problem of council being understaffed which is why I feel the Government has to revisit their job freeze and ensure the local authority is adequately staffed so that they won’t have a reason to work overtime,” said Mr Dube.

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