The ongoing job action by municipal workers in Chitungwiza is as unfortunate as it is avoidable. NewsDay Editorial
The workers downed tools on Monday after months of effort to get the local authority to pay them outstanding salaries. They have not been paid since August because the council says it has no money.
As a result of the strike, service delivery has ground to a halt in the sprawling dormitory town of over a million people – a development that poses a serious health risk to ratepayers. The workers cannot be blamed for taking this drastic action. They need to survive and to feed their families.
Mayor of the town, Alderman Phellimon Chipiyo, is a non- executive official and can, therefore, just watch as events unfold.
The man in charge, newly-appointed town clerk George Makunde, and his managers have apparently failed to deal with the issue and as of Tuesday, he was running to and from the Local Government offices in Harare seeking a solution from minister Ignatius Chombo.
But it is not as if Chombo was unaware of the simmering trouble in Chitungwiza, given that the workers had given their employer the requisite 14-day notice before embarking on the industrial action.
It is a puzzle, therefore, that Makunde and Chombo did nothing inside those two weeks to avert the strike – waiting, as it is, to handle the matter as an emergency.
But Chombo has not been known to move swiftly to save situations at local authorities. When the administrative rot that literally sank Chitungwiza was reported, it took the minister months, even years, to act. And when he did, there was a public outcry from residents who complained the minister’s solution was sucking blood out of the city’s livelihood.
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Failure by council to pay its workers today could be attributed to the excesses of Chombo’s prescription for the town’s previous sickness. He forced the city to pump out huge amounts of money in obscene salaries and allowances for his handpicked team of investigators.
The minister set up a team led by Fungai Mbetsa to “rescuscitate” Chitungwiza’s comatose administration, including its books of accounts.
The team announced it had cut the city’s salary bill by $800 000 through removal of illegal allowances for corrupt officials and a reversal of unlawful pay increases for the same people.
The announcement sent residents into celebration and hopeful workers believed their salary nightmare was a thing of the past. But midway through their celebration, they learnt that the so-called rescucitation team was bleeding the city to death.
Municipal workers found Mbetsa was getting $26 525 in salaries and allowances per month, his deputy about $14 500 while the other five team members got about $13 500 each.
The team stayed in Chitungwiza for months, until they were retired – presumably after a job well done.
So could the ongoing strike be evidence of the job well done?
