NORTON Town Council has slashed its top management’s salaries by 50% to reduce its wage bill and allocate more resources to service delivery.
BY NUNURAI JENA
The move came following a government directive for local authorities to ensure a 30:70% salaries/service delivery ratio.
Norton Town Council’s finance committee chairperson, Maxwell Chiutsi, told residents at a meeting last Friday that the local authority was now compliant with the government directive.
“As council, we are not happy with the bloated wage bill and as a first step towards restoring normalcy in the finance department, we thought it wise to slash salaries of top management by 50%, but the decision created a rift between councillors and management, but there is no going back” he said.
But residents called for more cost-cutting measures, including retrenchment of excess staff.
The meeting, which was organised by Norton MP, Temba Mliswa, saw residents and council management trading barbs.
“As council officials, you are there to implement decisions passed by us politicians, not to be part of us … If you want to be politicians, put on the political jacket and we can fight. Please do your job without meddling into our territory,” Mliswa said.
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The residents also expressed concern over the poor state of roads and proliferation of private land developers, whom they accused of swindling desperate homeseekers.
