The on-going job action by Municipality workers praiseworthy The Chitungwiza Residents Trust (Chitrest) commends the decision by the workers of Chitungwiza Municipality of going on a strike in protest for their outstanding salaries. The close to 2 000 employees of the country’s third largest municipality has gone for 14 months without getting their salaries. The total amount owed to the council employees has reached an astronomical figure of about US$8 million. This continued failure by the local authority to timeously remunerate its excessive workforce has negatively affected the quality of service delivery rendered to residents. The incompetent town management has also failed to engage stakeholders such as government, residents and the business community in coming up with a strategy to clear the ever-increasing debt owed to the council employees. This has seen the figure continuously growing resultantly plunging the council into a semi-permanent state of bankruptcy. The council workers through their union leaders have tried to engage the town management for a long-lasting solution to this issue but in vain, owing to the management’s incompetence and pompousness. Instead of incorporating recommendations from various stakeholders such as workers, residents and ratepayers in policy formulation and implementation, the Makunde-led administration recently chose to suspend three workers’ union executive members including its chairperson Mr Ephraim Katsina. The three workers’ leaders were only reinstated at the behest of the Parliament of Zimbabwe. The same management has resorted to dragging residents and ratepayers to court for a number of trivial issues at the expense of the ratepayers’ money instead of finding cheaper credit control mechanisms. The same administration which has dismally failed to provide efficient and effective service delivery to residents recently approached the High Court for the permission to demolish more than 14 000 so-called illegal houses in Chitungwiza and Seke rural. It boggles the mind that the same council has failed to pay its employees for so long yet it can afford to pay huge legal costs of fighting residents and ratepayers. Chitrest is in solidarity with the council employees at this hour of their greatest need for most of them have endured problems ranging from failing to pay home rentals and monthly bills, having their children withdrawn from school for delayed or non-payment of fees, starvation and other related challenges. Our prayers are with the suffering council employees who need to soldier-on until they are given their unsettled dues. We call upon the town management to urgently clear the workers’ outstanding salaries so as to improve the quality of service delivery in Chitungwiza and also immediately withdraw a host of pending irrelevant court cases that are unnecessarily gobbling council’s already dwindled resource base.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 07:43:37 +0000
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