The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Municipal Reporter
BULAWAYO residents are set to go a little longer without key services as council workers insist that they will not return to work until management meets their demands.
This comes amid revelations that the lowest paid worker in the local authority is getting a basic pay of ZW$1 900. Council workers downed tools last Wednesday, declaring incapacitation and vowing not to go to work until their grievances are met.
In an interview with Sunday News, Zimbabwe Urban Councils Workers Union (ZUCWU – Bulawayo branch) chairperson, Mr Ambrose Sibindi said while they had initially intended to meet the council management yesterday, the latter changed goal posts at the eleventh hour, rescheduling the meeting for Monday. He said their intention was not to cripple service delivery but wanted workers to be given a humane salary.
“Some residents have accused us of crippling service delivery, which is honestly not our intention. Surely for the lowest paid worker to be getting a basic pay of $1 900 is inhumane. How are they expected to survive because as it is coming to work for them becomes an expense.
“We gave management our position three months back, of which they initially told us that they were waiting for the approval of the 2021 supplementary budget, now after its approval they are telling us they have no mandate, clearly someone is taking the other for granted,” said Mr Sibindi.
The workers’ chairperson revealed that after their permanent negotiating committee meeting that was held last Monday, a deadlock was reached after council management had offered zero percent increase and two more meetings had been held all with no positive outcome.
“We had an informal meeting on Thursday and another meeting on Friday where management claimed they had no mandate to offer us what we wanted, of which this is not true as this matter was discussed by the general purposes council committee in October last year where councillors gave council the clear mandate to engage workers.
“Our intention was that we meet with management on Saturday (yesterday), so that if possible an agreement is reached and workers resume their duties on Monday, but for some reason they cancelled this meeting at the last meeting and instead said we will meet on Monday (tomorrow), therefore we will wait till then to hear what they are offering us, if it’s something we are agreeable to, then we can go back to work,” said Mr Sibindi.
Contacted for comment, the city’s acting Town Clerk, Mrs Skhangele Zhou said they were still engaging workers with the hope of resolving the impasse and having the workers go back to work as the strike was adversely affecting service delivery.
“Our hope is that we resolve this impasse as urgently as possible because this is seriously affecting service delivery which is our key mandate as a local authority. We were initially meant to meet workers on Saturday but we had to postpone the meeting to Monday as they are a few things which we want to look at before we make an offer to the workers’ representatives,” said Mrs Zhou.
Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA) co-ordinator, Mr Emmanuel Ndlovu said there was a need for problems being faced by workers to be urgently looked into as this was affecting service delivery. He said council management and workers had to urgently reach common ground as the job action had far reaching consequences.
