REDCLIFF Town Council employees are up in arms with their employer for backtracking on a pledge to allocate them residential stands in lieu of outstanding salaries. BY BLESSED MHLANGA
The 300 workers have since approached the courts seeking to force the local authority to honour its pledge allocating them residential stands in the Grasslands area as per an earlier agreement.
The workers, led by Epiphas Matsaure and Methias Mandaza, filed the application at the Kwekwe Magistrates’ Court under case number 273/2015.
In their application, the workers claimed that on January 22, 2009, council offered them 300 residential stands through a formal letter signed by the director of housing and community services.
The council and workers then signed a memorandum of understanding on April 8 of the same year before the local authority made a U-turn and unilaterally withdrew the offer on junior employees.
He said they had since established that top council managers had been allowed to remain at their residential and commercial stands.
“I was shocked to learn that that senior managers were also offered residential and commercial stands and these were not withdrawn which makes the decision of the local authority discriminatory against the lowly-paid staff members,” Matsaure wrote.
Council did not state reasons for its reversal of the deal, only saying: “This letter serves to notify you that a special council resolution of 7th April 2010 to rescind earlier resolution of Tuesday 11th of November 2008 (item 4): Allocation of residential stands to workers.”
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Council added: “All employees who had been given offer letters for free residential stands are hereby advised to ignore the offer letters as they are now null and void. In addition, for those who had signed and collected agreement of award, you are to hand them over to the director of housing and community services.
“Failure to hand over the forms will not legitimise the withdrawn donation of stands number 6077 Rutendo Extension into Grasslands, Redcliff, so you are advised to comply.”
