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500 more to fill vacant posts, it emerged yesterday.
These revelations come amid reports that three quarters of the city’s revenue was going towards salaries with severe impact on service delivery.
The city’s monthly revenue stands at US$10 million, against a salary bill of US$7,5 million.
Be that as it may, the city struggles to pay the 10 000-strong workforce on time, fails to supply water to residents and collect refuse.
The plans to employ more workers contradict Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda’s recent assertions that the city’s workforce was bloated.
Town clerk Dr Tendai Mahachi and spokesman Mr Leslie Gwindi, yesterday concurred in separate interviews that Harare would not lay off any of its workers.
They advised their boss Mr Masunda to desist from issuing statements they claimed demora-lised workers.
Mayors and councillors rely on expert advice from officials in discharging their duties.
“I have told both the World Bank officials and Mr Masunda that evidence on the ground reveals that there are lots of vacancies in council. The only issue is that we have people in wrong jobs,” Dr Mahachi said.
Mr Masunda made his assertions basing on a World Bank audit of the city’s employee establishment.
But Dr Mahachi said: “Even the World Bank report says there should be no layoffs. The report actually shows that the city has the said vacancies, which have not been filled because of financial constraints.”
He said council had actually established that all its departments were understaffed by up to 4 000 workers.
Dr Mahachi said before filling the posts, management had resolved to move employees to departments where their skills were relevant.
“We are also looking at on-the-job training for those employees with relevant academic qualifications without necessarily laying off anyone,” he said.
Earlier, Mr Gwindi had confirmed manage-ment’s position.
“What we need is rationalisation. It is a fact that all our departments are understaffed. Heads are requesting every week to be allowed to em-ploy. For example, the city requires more nurses and we need additional employees in the urban planning department,” he said.
But Mr Masunda stuck to his guns, saying council has excess staff.
“I verily believe that there is an unassailable case for downsizing the complement of staff with-in the City of Harare at all levels. We need a lean and mean team of highly-motivated and well-paid employees who are either multi-skilled or have capacity to be multi-skilled,” he said.
Mr Masunda blamed poor service delivery on moonlighting by both Government and city officials.
“The tragedy in Zimbabwe is that moonlighting has reached endemic proportions, especially among functionaries in both central and local Government,” he said.
There has been concern that the city’s salary bill chewed up to 70 percent of collected revenue with only 30 percent earmarked for service deli-very.
Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Minister Ignatius Chombo is on record as saying that all council budgets should allocate 30 percent of income to salaries and 70 percent for service delivery.
Mr Masunda believes the city could be run by only 6 000 workers.
Earlier reports had indicated Harare employed up to 10 500 people but Dr Mahachi revised the figure down to 9 800.
In October last year Mr Masunda revealed that 650 workers had failed to turn up for a job evaluation exercise.
The employees were immediately struck off the payroll.
Dr Mahachi has said all workers would be paid by today after their salaries were deposited with their respective banks.
He said the city had wanted all workers to open accounts with Kingdom Bank to allow for easy access of salaries.
The city has an arrangement with the bank that allows payments to be made to workers whether or not the city has deposited money into the bank.
Recently there was chaos in the local authority as workers staged sit-ins demanding to be paid on time. This resulted in many suburbs going for days without water and refuse not being collected.
Bongani Ndlovu