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In an interview on Friday, Town Clerk, Mr Middleton Nyoni said:
“Before the end of the year, we will revisit all the posts within the city council and see if they add value to the local authority.
The job evaluation exercise will help us to identify the posts that we can do without and remain with the most important ones that will at least keep the local authority surviving,” said Mr Nyoni.
“We will announce to the public before we conduct the exercise and we will carefully get rid of the posts that we feel are not adding value to the local authority.”
Council has a total of 3 700 workers and has over the past few years struggled to pay them as well as funding overall service delivery. Bulawayo is one of the local authorities that spend up to 70 percent of their monthly revenue on salaries, leaving around 30 percent for service.
Strikes have become common at council in recent months. At some point the local authority was two months behind in paying its employees. Twelve other councils in other parts of the country were in the same predicament.
But as the local authority works on the job evaluation exercise that could make some posts redundant, Mr Nyoni said the city council had, at the same time, an acute shortage of manpower and had no money to pay for the limited labour that is provided by the workers.
“The city council relies on revenue collection to pay the workers and do other projects but the local authority is owed more than $69 million by ratepayers. We are receiving very limited funding from the Government and financial institutions to do all the important work that has to be done by the local authority.
“This challenge leaves us with no money to pay workers who look forward to being paid their salaries at the end of every month. The situation forces us to work with inadequate manpower which then affects service delivery in the city,” said Mr Nyoni.
The city council is under a $55 million debt including $17 million owed to Zesa, $14 million to the Local Authorities Pension Fund, $3 million in pay as you earn and a $2, 1 million loan accessed from the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe. Council is conducting its 2013 budget consultations with residents and stakeholders in the city to establish implementation challenges for 2012 and priorities for next year.
Residents who attended some budget consultative meetings expressed concern the high salaries that are being paid to the council’s top management and called for the revival of its facilities to improve revenue collection and ease the burden on ratepayers.
Bulawayo Mayor, Councillor Thaba Moyo said the only answer to the city council’s problems was for the ratepayers to pay their bills.
“We are aware of the low disposable incomes affecting ratepayers but I still want to urge them to meet their obligations to the council so that we are able to pay our workers, and may be hire more people to provide sufficient services and improve service delivery in the city.
“We all have to make sure that the city survives to acceptable standards,” said Clr Moyo.
Online Reporter