The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Municipal Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council has reached an agreement with its workers that will see the latter being able to purchase housing stands and pay their rentals using what the local authority owes them in salary arrears.
The council is reportedly two months behind in paying it’s workers’ salaries and according to a council confidential report, workers have since written to the local authority requesting that council offsets what they owed through the purchasing of stands and payment of rates. Previously council workers could purchase at council auctions and pay using what council owed them.
“The union would like to thank council for privileging its employees with the facility for using their salary arrears to offset payment at auctions.
Employees have indeed received this with great gratitude. Workers, however, are of the opinion that this would go a long way if this facility further extends to offsetting other debts they owe to council such as housing stands and rates than limiting the facility specifically for auction only,” reads the letter from the workers.
In supporting the scheme, council’s director of housing and community services Mr Dictor Khumalo further suggested that the facility extends to vehicle loans and payment of school fees.
“The proposal submitted by the union that the facility be extended to offsetting other debts owed to council as housing stands and rates is supported.
In addition I suggest the facility should include the offsetting of vehicle loans under the essential car user scheme and school fees payment.
“Since a policy dispensation was in place permitting staff to purchase stock at the council’s auction sales using the net value of their salary arrears, the union’s current request merely seeks to extend the facility to cover payment of council’s various chargeable services and products,” reads part of the report.
A couple of months ago four of council’s top officials — the chamber secretary, Mrs Sikhangele Zhou, engineering director; Engineer Simela Dube, finance director; Mr Kimpton Ndimande and the human resources manager, Mr Makhosi Tshalebwa — were caught in the eye of the storm after they allegedly encashed their leave days to pay off their vehicle loans without a council resolution in place.
The four directors were owed a combined figure of $101 644 in leave days with Mrs Zhou’s days calculated at $21 147, Mr Ndimande; $26 055, Eng Dube; $24 362 and Mr Tshalebwa; $30 080.
According to a confidential report Mrs Zhou who was left with a vehicle loan balance of $21 040 was left with $7 of her loan as her leave days were worth $21 147, Mr Ndimande had a minus balance as he was left with $26 012 to pay for his vehicle loan with his leave days worth $26 055.
Engineer Dube’s vehicle loan was left with $24 300, while his leave days were valued at $24 362 while the human resources manager, Mr Tshalebwa, on the other hand — who got his loan later than others — was left with $19 791 of his loan which was pegged at $49 871 and his leave days had a net value of $30 080.
