Council workers mull strike

Innocent Ruwende Municipal Reporter
Harare City Council workers have given the city a two-week ultimatum to pay outstanding salaries and bonuses, failing which they will take industrial action. The workers have gone for over five months without receiving their salaries. In a letter to Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni, copied to various ministers, Harare Municipal Workers’ Union (HMWU) executive chairman Mr Cosmas Bungu, who is also representing the Zimbabwe Allied Municipal Workers’ Union (ZAMWU) and, Water and Allied Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe (WAWUZ), said city executives were furthering their interests of self-aggrandisement at the expense of the employees.

“We wish to bring to your attention that the whole sum of the employees in the undertaking are no longer amused by their continued enslavement at the hands of the Harare City Council. This continued behaviour of stealing employees’ petty wages has been and is still in flagrant breach and violation of Section 6 of the Labour Act (Chapter 28:01).”

“This finds expression in the embarrassing revelation from the recent audit done for the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing by the Auditor-General. The report diligently exposes the kleptocracy that has become part of the City of Harare’s DNA at Town House,” he said.

He said the legacy of “zero care to employees welfare” had already plunged the city into chaos to the extent that the facade of a vision of “attaining a World Class City by 2025” was a mere euphemism behind which city executives wanted to enrich themselves.