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Patrick Chitumba, Midlands Bureau Chief
GWERU City Council is collecting less than $10 million from an estimated $36 million it is supposed to collect through billing companies and residents per month due to the adverse impact of the Covid-19 induced lockdown.

Of the collected revenue, about $8 million goes towards salary obligations, which leaves the local authority in a deficit every month.

The cash-strapped city council is, therefore, failing to meet most of its obligations such as rehabilitation of roads or raising funds to purchase three water pumps to improve pumping of raw water from Amapongobwe Dam to the treatment plant to improve water supplies across the residential suburbs.

Given the current cash flow position, the council has said it is not in a position to pay salaries  demanded by employees and will only review that position once revenue inflows increase.

Councillors in June  approved a new pay structure for  employees that has seen the lowest worker getting $2 550 and the highest earning $22 627 per month.

The new salary structure came after two collective bargaining negotiations held by both management and employees representatives.

In an interview yesterday, Mayor Councillor Josiah Makombe said Covid-19 had affected council cash inflows as its businesses and residents were defaulting in settling their monthly bills.

He said they were still negotiating with their employees on a salary structure that leaves the local authority in a position to provide service delivery.

“We are still negotiating with our employees, I want to tell you that we are billing something like $36 million per month, but we are collecting less than $10 million,” he said.

“From that, the billables we are collecting is less than $5 million with some coming from different streams where we can’t guarantee that there will be that kind of payment every month because of different factors,” said Cllr Makombe.

He said the Covid-19 pandemic had hit hard the pockets of residents and industry as well, leading to a decrease in revenue collected monthly.

“So, our revenue has not improved and the reason is because of the pandemic, which you know has affected everyone’s social life. Revenue inflows have been disturbed and so we can’t expect to keep on collecting revenue like as before and so we have been very much affected,” said Cllr Makombe.

He said council was negotiating with its workers to see how best they can balance the salary increment and service delivery.

“We can’t ignore them as well as they are part of service delivery. If you want to talk about service delivery, you talk of human capital and therefore the need to balance so that the wage bill is manageable,” he said.

Council wage bill is estimated at around $8 million and could spiral to about $12 should there be a further increment.

“We are still negotiating because we feel that it’s too much for a city like Gweru with no major source of revenue worse in this Covid-19 pandemic. So we are still negotiating and I hope before the end of the month, we would have reached a compromise where we pay them a decent wage while we remain able to provide efficient service delivery,” he said.

The workers committee have submitted their position paper requesting to be paid above the poverty datum line at $7930 basic salary or alternatively to revert to the 2015 agreed salary structure, which placed the lowest paid employee at US$450, which translates to $11 930.

If the lowest were to be awarded $7930, it would imply that grade 16 would earn $125 358. The structure would translate to a gross salary of $22 252 543 and a net salary of $14 464 153.