adminInnocent Ruwende Municipal Reporter
Salaries and allowances are set to gobble $116 million of Harare City Councils’ 2017 budget as the city seeks a waiver to treat salaries and allowances payable to employees in service delivery fields such as water production and street cleaning as part of service delivery costs.Harare has been struggling to bring its employment costs in line with 30:70 employment costs to service delivery ratio prescribed by Government.
Last week the city presented a $345 million revenue budget and a $103 million capital budget for next year.
According to the budget, salaries and allowances were allocated $116,3 million representing 29,9 percent of total expenditure while the remaining 70,1 percent will go towards service delivery.
The salaries budget represented a $2 million increase attributable to ministerial approved appointments and annual increments.
General expenses are expected to increase from $170 million to $182 million due to anticipated increase in service delivery expenditure.
Presenting the 2017 budget, Finance and Development Committee chairperson Councillor Luckson Mukunguma said repairs and maintenance would slightly go up from $38 million in 2016 to $39 million in 2017, driven by water pipe replacement programmes among other works.
“It cannot be said that City of Harare operations are largely labour intensive and with that understanding, the city’s administration has accordingly made representations to the relevant authorities.”
“Your Worship, it is council’s submission that part of employment costs relate to street cleaning, refuse removal, health delivery, water production to mention a few, should be properly categorised as part of service delivery expenditure and should be resident in the 70 percent category,” he said.
In May this year, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Saviour Kasukuwere approved Harare City Council’s $343 million 2016 budget on condition that the local authority reduces its employment costs, among other requirements.
Council was also ordered to reduce its permanent overdraft facility from $1,5 million as the interest was too high “for ratepayers to carry” as well as show the marked improvement in revenue collection as indicated in its budget.
Harare also complied with the Governments’ directive to reduce the number of its active bank accounts and is now operating five transaction accounts while the rest are dedicated on bill payments.
Council had over 40 bank accounts and as condition for approving the city’s 2016 budget, Minister Kasukuwere also ordered the local authority to reduce its bank accounts.
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