The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
THE Local Government Board has stopped the Bulawayo City Council from internally promoting personnel to top positions of the newly created positions of Human Capital Director and Town Planning Director.
The board has instead directed that the local authority fill the two positions through the normal competitive recruitment process.
BCC had initially wanted to promote Mr Makhosi Tshalebwa and Mr Wisdom Siziba to the positions of Human Capital Director and Town Planning director respectively. The two have been acting in the positions since the creation of the two departments.
Another top position that is due to be filled is that of deputy finance director. According to a council confidential report, the local authority had only aimed at recruiting the deputy finance director via a competitive process.
“The position of deputy finance director, in the financial services department was being filled through normal competitive recruitment while, the two positions of Human Capital Director and Town Planning Director both at head of department level were to be filled through upgrading and elevation. Since the appointment of designated positions is finalized at Local Government Board level, all the three cases were remitted to the board secretariat for attention. However, all the cases were not finalised due to the fact that the board had not yet been constituted,” reads the report.
The report further states that when the board was finally constituted they rejected the proposal by the local authority to appoint the two top positions via upgrading.
“The Local Government Board has since been constituted by the parent ministry. To that end the second interviews for the post of deputy finance director will be hosted shortly in Harare. As for the two positions of human capital and town planning directors, the Local Government Board has directed that the posts be filled through normal competitive recruitment. Consequently, the recruitment process to fill the positions is underway,” reads the report.
However, councillors are reportedly attempting to waylay the directive by the board and have since directed that the local authority puts on hold the advertisements for the two positions.
“His Worship the Mayor, Councillor Solomon Mguni sought clarity on the legal status of the Local Government Board. The Deputy Mayor, Clr Mlandu Ncube suggested that the advert should be put on hold. The general consensus among councillors was that the advert be put on hold at the moment,” reads the report.
The human capital department used to fall under town clerk Mr Chistopher Dube’s department until a restructuring exercise recommended that it be a stand-alone department four years ago. The town planning department, until November last year, fell under the Director of Engineering Services, Engineer Simela Dube, when councillors moved a motion to have it as a stand-alone department after noting that Eng Dube was now being overwhelmed with other key duties within his department which include water, sewer reticulation and the city’s roads section.
It was further noted that there was a vast functional difference and professional background between the Director of Engineering Services (engineer) and the deputy director responsible for the town planning section.
