The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Municipal Reporter
SENIOR officials at the Bulawayo City Council are headed for a clash with the Government after they reportedly defied a directive to cut their salaries in line with the rationalisation policy.
The local authority last year passed a resolution to rationalise their salaries, a move that saw the Town Clerk’s salary pegged at $7 400 with the rest of council workers’ salaries being also reduced accordingly. The council’s “executive group” reacted to the salary cuts by filing papers with the High Court challenging the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing’s order for them to rationalise their salaries.
However, it has since emerged that senior council officials sold the Ministry a dummy by pretending that they were cutting salaries as Sunday News can now exclusively reveal that the Town Clerk, Mr Christopher Dube has been negotiating with the top officials which had seen assistant directors’ salaries being reverted to the figures they were before rationalisation.
According to a confidential council report, a number of perks have thus been set for these “executive members”, which has rendered the rationalisation process useless.
“As part of efforts to improve the conditions of employment for the executive group, the Town Clerk had negotiated with that group of employees, and that effort had seen improvement in the salaries of the affected staff members. Actually salaries of assistant directors had been back to where they had been before rationalisation and that had amicably resolved the dispute between them and council,” reads the report.
As for directors and deputy directors the local authority has resolved that in addition to their reduced salaries, the council will purchase new vehicles for them and provide fuel coupons.
“New conditions of employment had been negotiated and introduced for the directors and deputy directors in search of an internal solution. For the directors it had been agreed that council would buy vehicles for them, maintain the vehicles and give them a fuel allocation of 250 litres per month. For the deputy directors it had been agreed that they be given a fuel allocation of 200 litres per month. These efforts to improve the conditions of employment of the employees who were affected by the rationalisation of salaries and allowances had gone through council in November,” reads the report.
Further the “executive members” will now have their previous vehicle loan balances reduced and cut off with the senior officials utilising their leave days to pay off the balances.
“All the affected members of staff had had enough vacation days off their vehicle loan balances, with the exception of the human resources manager, whose loan balance exceeded the value of his maximum leave accumulation limit because he bought his vehicle well after all the other members of the executive group and his loan balance had therefore been still high.
“The Town Clerk noted that the arrangement did not involve any movement of cash as the set-off method of settlement had been used and adjustments of accounts were affected accordingly. The set-off on the other hand had helped reduce the liability of excessive vacation leave days, a risk that external auditors had always advised against,” reads the report.
According to the minutes the council’s chamber secretary; Mrs Sikhangele Zhou was left with a vehicle loan balance of $21 040 with leave days worth $21 147, Finance director, Mr Kimpton Ndimande was left with $26 012 to pay for his vehicle loan with his leave days worth $26 055.
Engineering director, Mr Simela Dube’s vehicle loan was left with $24 300, with his leave days pegged at $24 362 while the human resources manager, Mr Makhosi Tshalebwa has a vehicle loan balance of $49 871 and his leave days have a net value of $30 080.
Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Ministry permanent secretary, Engineer George Mlilo was quoted in the media saying that local authorities that are challenging the Government directive on salary cuts in court were wasting their time as the directive was binding.
