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Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Harare Mayor Councillor Bernard Manyenyeni has described the city’s human resource costs as a disaster, with the council spending $10 million of revenue collections on salaries, leaving a meagre $2 million for service delivery.
Harare is collecting between $12 million and $13 million monthly from ratepayers against a budget of $24 mil- lion. Clr Manyenyeni said council was expecting to have the salary bench- marking report availed for “important and necessary review”.
“After nearly three years of arguing, we are closer to independent evaluation of our remuneration levels across all jobs,” he said. “It is a matter of sustained embarrassment that our single largest expenditure item is ignored by 95 percent of decision-makers in and around council.
“Early this year, Government declared the city’s roads a disaster. In comparison, the human resources costs crisis is a bigger disaster by far. Out of the $12 million collected monthly, we are paying around $10 million to salaries and benefits.”
Last month, Clr Manyenyeni sensationally claimed that the city was in the business of paying salaries.
He said the city was burdened with a heavy wage bill and the management tended to take the limelight, yet almost every job in council was “overpaid” compared to the market.
Last year, the city embarked on a salary survey and benchmarking against service delivery following stakeholders’ concerns that the city was spending much of its revenue on employment costs at a time when service delivery plummeted.
The move was criticised by Harare Municipal Workers’ Union executive chairman Mr Cosmas Bungu, who said it was offensive to say that employees were not part and parcel of service delivery.
“If the workers are not happy, then how is the city going to have clean streets, well-built roads?” he said. “Without happy workers or workers, there ceases to be service de- livery. “HMWU as social partners are of the qualified view that labour costs are part of service delivery and that there is no way that we can separate the two.
“The city has to simply revamp its revenue collection strategies in order to enhance its income, service delivery and the prompt payment of salaries in terms of the law.”
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