The Sunday News
THE Bulawayo City Council is headed for a collision course with its workers with reports that the local authority has embarked on a job evaluation exercise with an aim to revisit a previous failed resolution to retrench.
According to council officials the local authority has already engaged a consultant who started a staff audit in February, with the exercise set to end in July. Council sources further revealed that despite council’s constant argument that it was understaffed, there were some departments which were overstaffed hence the need to retrench or reassign.
Confirming the exercise, the local authority’s Acting Town Clerk, Mrs Sikhangele Zhou said they had already engaged a consultant but said their workers should not panic as they would only know which route to take when the results were released.
“The reason we have not publicised this exercise is because we don’t want to pre-empt the results of the audit and cause unnecessary apprehension among our workers. We expect that the firm would have completed the exercise by July, we will certainly publicise the results. Further, to avoid panic among our workers we are working closely with the workers’ union and when we reach a decision as per the results of the audit we will then engage the workers’ union on the best possible way forward,” said Mrs Zhou.
The local authority has since last year been postponing the exercise amid pressure from workers. Responding to questions from Sunday News, when the move was first mooted the council’s senior public relations officer Mrs Nesisa Mpofu said while they would only know the next move to take the local authority presently has a staff complement of 3 584 of which they required an actual establishment of 5 070.
“The decision on retrenchment will only be made after the completion of evaluation, rationalisation and restructuring before the start and finalisation of the exercises, you cannot decide whether or not you are retrenching as an organisation.
“Rationalisation is meant to identify staffing levels in each section and ensure that the levels are commensurate with the level of activity in the city, the staff complement should be supportive of service delivery, job evaluation will be to identify over-graded and under-graded positions and ensure all positions in council are appropriately graded and there is full utilisation of labour while restructuring as an exercise ensures that the structure is cost effective and promotes effectiveness and efficiency,” said Mrs Mpofu.
Council sources have however, revealed that the local authority was forced to embark on the exercise so as to reduce its wage bill.
“The thinking behind this exercise is that we are still operating under a system that was set by the colonial government, which says the local authority needs a staff compliment of 5 000, which has seen council officials always making noise about being understaffed but we are saying do we really need 5 000 workers.
“On the other hand Harare did a similar exercise last year after pressure from the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, now we have to take the same route noting that there are some redundant positions within the municipality. If we really discover that there are some redundant positions we will have to retrench but our wish is to get rid of the excess staff through natural wastage,” said the source.
The source further revealed that the local authority was nursing a shortage in critical areas, like health services hence they needed to layoff staffers in other departments so as to employ more nurses. The local authority has been facing financial problems for some time now with the municipality workers crying foul over non-payment of salaries and in some instances downing tools demanding remuneration of over three months. Previously the local authority also considered the retrenchment of 1 049 workers with some having to endure salary and allowance cuts.
The Harare Municipality also collapsed several departments in a new structure, resulting in some directors becoming redundant.
