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Bualwayo City Hall

The core business of both urban and rural local authorities is to provide services to residents or communities under their jurisdiction. What this means is that councils should prioritise service delivery. The bulk of the revenue collected by local authorities should therefore be directed towards service delivery as opposed to paying hefty salaries and perks for senior staff.

It is therefore disturbing to learn that salaries and perks for senior councils staff continue to gobble the bulk of the revenue collected by local authorities despite a government directive two years ago for the councils to cut the salaries and allowances. Government in 2014 directed councils to reduce salaries and perks of senior managers but it seems some councils are yet to comply with this directive.

One of the councils is Bulawayo City Council which only resolved to comply with this directive in July this year but the move is being resisted by senior council management staff.

The 12 senior managers challenged the council’s move to cut their total package by 40 percent but they lost the case at the High Court recently.

In his ruling, Bulawayo High Court judge, Justice Maxwell Takuva, said government’s directive for councils to reduce salaries of senior managers was in the national interest after realising that local authorities were paying unsustainable salaries.

When government issued the directive, most local authorities were spending about 75 percent of their revenue on salaries and allowances at the expense of service delivery. Justice Takuva said it was important for councils to ensure effective service delivery hence the need to reduce hefty salaries and perks paid to senior managers.

What is clear from the Bulawayo City Council case is that senior managers who have been enjoying hefty salaries and allowances do not care about service delivery or the plight of fellow workers. It is a fact that most councils are failing to pay salaries and as such workers have gone for months without being paid.

It therefore boggles the mind when senior managers of the same struggling councils resist a review of their salaries and perks downwards so that the salaries are sustainable. The revenue for councils comes from the residents in the form of rates, rentals, service charges and water bills and what is obtaining on the ground is that this revenue is dwindling by the day.

Many residents are out of employment and as such are struggling to raise money to pay for the services provided by councils. The sooner the senior managers come to terms with reality the better for the councils and residents. It is not in dispute that the economy is not performing and a manager worth his or her salt cannot rule out a salary cut now and in the future.

Government is working on a comprehensive programme to turn around the economy and it is  our hope that it won’t be long before we are start enjoying the benefits of this move.

We want at this juncture to appeal to senior managers of local authorities to, like the rest of workers in the country, tighten their belts until such a time that the revenue inflows improve in tandem with the growth of the economy.

It serves no purpose to be paid hefty salaries and then go for months without receiving the salaries because the employer cannot sustain the salary bill. Government has said salaries for council employees should not be more than 30 percent of total revenue to enable councils to provide services to residents.

Many councils are failing to provide adequate water to residents and this is because many of them have not invested in the upgrading of their pumping and water reticulation infrastructure since independence. We want to once again call on senior council staff to be guided by the councils’ core mandate which is service delivery and central government on its part should ensure councils comply with its 2014 directive.