City loses US$4,5m to workers

after realising they would lose their labour cases should the city institute hearings.
Human resources director Mr Cainos Chingombe has been blamed for the chaos.

Fresh information also suggests that respective heads of departments failed to institute labour hearings against the workers who absconded work for periods of up to two years.
When the workers returned to their work stations they were just accepted back as if they had been reporting for duty resulting in those who had remained loyal to council complaining.

Councillors sympathetic to Mr Chingombe on Monday revealed that the blame should be shared by the directors under whose management the city lost US$4,5 million to workers who only “came back for huge payouts” and left.

According to a schedule of payments for the period February 2009 to June 2011, two workers from the chamber secretary’s department were paid US$55 278,83 while 17 employees from the city health department were paid US$274 683,30.

An additional US$40 552,87 was paid out to two workers in the treasury department with 14 employees from the housing and community services department getting US$151 255,96.
Thirteen employees from the engineering department were paid US$130 066,67 while 91 employees from the public safety department were paid US$1,4 million. Twelve employees from the waste management department were paid US$104 145,51, while only one employee from the urban planning services department was paid US$5 078.47.

The councillors feel the respective heads of departments and not Mr Chingombe alone should be disciplined for the chaos.
The schedule only has 150 workers and does not include the list of those with pending cases and those that were paid later in June and those to be paid out this month.

Asked for comment Mr Chingombe referred all questions to city spokesman Mr Leslie Gwindi.
When pressured to shed light on his involvement and given that some councillors were saying blame should be shared by respective directors Mr Chingombe said he was not at fault.

“In all these cases no charge sheets were ever forwarded to me. I am not at fault. I did my best to advise line managers through a memo to all departments.
“The workers who went away without official leave were never reported to my department. My letter was simply safeguarding interests of the organisation,” he said.

In his letter he said: “It has come to my attention that there are some employees who have not been reporting for duty and have pending disciplinary cases, who have started reporting for duty.
“Please be advised that such employees’ salaries, remain frozen, pending the conclusion of their cases. Accordingly, they should not be accepted back at work.”

Mr Chingombe said his letter had been misunderstood.
“I raised the alarm and it was in the respective directors’ purview to take action, which they did not,” he said.

In June alone 62 workers were reinstated at a cost of US$825 831 to the city. The highest payout was US$38 497,82 and the lowest was US$1 119,5 with the majority of the payouts in the range of US$10 000 to US$20 000.

This meant that the city’s salary bill shot to US$4,8 million in June. Any huge payments invariably affect the salary bill.
Local authorities generate their funding from ratepayers who naturally expect the money to fund service delivery.