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Minister Saviour Kasukuwere

Elizabeth Tsuro Business Reporter
GWERU City Council is struggling to clear $5 million in salary arrears to its employees dating back to February this year. About $750,000 of the amount is reportedly owed to idle workers who were left jobless following the closure of the local authority’s brewery, Go Beer Breweries, a few months ago.

The local authority has a staff complement of about 1,300 and recently fired 50 workers taking advantage of the three months’ notice ruling by the Supreme Court.

Sources say the local authority is also failing to meet its estimated $1.6 million wage bill per month.

The council, according to the recently appointed commissioner, Tsunga Mhangami, generates $1.2 million from its monthly collections from rates and water bills against a wage bill of $ 1.6 million.

During a Zanu-PF coordination committee meeting a week ago, Mhangami said the local authority earnings were far below its wage bill.

“We owe our workers $5 million in outstanding salaries dating back to February. We’ve a wage bill of $1.6 million,” he said.

Mhangami said management was now forced to adopt drastic measures to reduce its operational costs and wage bill.

“We found the local authority in a quandary and menace. We’re trying to clean it up and extricate it from the quagmire. The council was bankrupt and the wage bill is higher than what the council is realising every month,” he said.

Mhangami said employees and residents should understand that most companies that used to pay huge sums of money for services rendered by the local authority were either ailing or dysfunctional.

In that light, he said, they wanted to restore sanity in Gweru as tasked by the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Saviour Kasukuwere, when he suspended 16 councillors and fired two for corruption, mismanagement of council funds and property among other allegations. The High Court has since ordered Kasukuwere to reinstate the suspended councillors.