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Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) is set to employ additional critical staff after Government lifted the job freeze barring local authorities from making new recruitments, Town Clerk Mr Christopher Dube said yesterday.
He revealed this during the Bulawayo Water and Sewerage Services Improvement Project Service (BWSSIP) delivery indaba held at the Zimbabwe International Exhibition Centre.
Bulawayo Provincial Affairs Minister Cde Judith Ncube was among the guests at the event.
Government in 2010 issued a directive barring institutions from recruiting additional staff as they were incapacitated to pay them.
Responding to questions from members of the public on council’s staff complement, Mr Dube said Government has given them the green light to recruit.
“There is another issue of employment freeze. Yes, Government had frozen employment for all posts because at some point we were not able to pay salary obligations and therefore Government indicated that we could not continue to employ when we are not able to pay those who are in post. For now, I want to assure the esteemed stakeholders that Government has unfrozen and we are able to employ,” said Mr Dube.
He said the council will only employ critical staff.
“However, in the employment we are not going to hurry into filling all the vacant posts because we are still struggling. We don’t have the resources; we will fill only those that are critical,” he said.
Mr Dube did not reveal which areas the local authority will be focusing on but recently council highlighted that it was close to shutting down some of its Fire Brigade stations due to shortage of fire fighters.
The council’s engineering department has also been affected by the job freeze although from time to time Government has allowed them to fill up posts.
In 2017, BCC revealed that it had 800 vacancies as a result of the job freeze which was also affecting service delivery.
Mr Dube said the BWSSIP project was safe in the hands of council and sponsors have written a report endorsing developments that have been made so far.
“Before I go on to the questions that have been asked let me go on to comment on the project implementation status. It is indeed confidence that has been shown by Government to give us this project implementation status ahead of any urban settlement in the country. I want to assure the Honourable Minister, policy makers and stakeholders that we are not going to disappoint on this one. So far, we have done so well. We are not beating our chests to say we have done very well. We are saying this because we have got a report that has come from the project sponsor the African Development Bank itself,” said Mr Dube. — @nqotshili
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