BULAWAYO City Council is struggling to pay its employees, resorting to staggering salaries like it did in August with just above half the workforce having received their September dues by yesterday.
NDUDUZO TSHUMA/ STEPHEN CHADENGA
Zimbabwe Urban Council Workers’ Union secretary-general Nkosiyabo Masuku said the local authority’s cashflow problems were being compounded by non-payment of rates and water bills by residents.
Masuku said some residents had wrongly interpreted Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo’s directive for local authorities to scrap debts accumulated between February 2009 and June 30 2013 as an exemption from paying for council services.
In the run-up to the July 31 general elections, Chombo directed all local authorities to scrap outstanding household debts in what observers described as an attempt at buying urban voters by Zanu PF.
Chombo said the move to scrap the debts was in line with Zanu PF’s pro-poor policy championed by President Robert Mugabe.
“The directive to scrap debts for a specific period of time made some residents to think that they could continue not paying debts,” Masuku said. “They should realise that it will come back to them.
“The people are our masters and if they do not pay rates, they will not get the service delivery they desire, and besides that, they would also demoralise the workforce.”
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Maseko said council was doing its best to ensure employees got their salaries on time but its efforts were being hampered by the non-payment of rates.
The failure by council to pay its workers comes at a time the Gweru City Council has also announced that it will not be able to pay workers’ salaries on time until the end of the year as a result of cashflow problems.
According to Gweru town clerk Daniel Matawu, revenue problems have continued to dog the city and council only managed to pay last month’s salaries from a bank overdraft which it is finding hard to repay.
Council has been failing to meet its salary obligations since the beginning of this year as a result of the revenue problems. “Council continues to experience cashflow challenges due to diminishing inflows and consequently can no longer pay salaries at the end of the month,” Matawu said.
“August salaries were only paid after getting assistance from our bankers in the form of an overdraft.
“The overdraft is proving difficult to pay back and this had a knock off effect on our September salaries,” he said.
Assistant town clerk Tapiwa Marerwa said the delay in salary payments had been communicated to the workers.
However, Marerwa could not give exact dates on when workers would get their September salaries.
“Everybody knows the situation at council,” he said. “Obviously workers will be paid, but at the moment I can’t give an exact date as to when.”
