Councillors’ extra perks fuel demands
Municipal workers to use this as bargaining tool for 15% pay hike
COUNCILLORS across the country will ring in the new year with a bag full of perks, thanks to taxpayers. This has raised the ire of municipal workers who said they will use the enormous improvement in mayors’ and councillors’ perks as a bargaining tool to secure the 15% wage increase they are demanding.
The new perks, announced by the South African Local Government Association (Salga) in a circular to municipalities last week, include the provision of bodyguards without threat analyses to all mayors and speakers in the country’s 257 councils and a R3 400 monthly cellphone allowance to the country’s 9 000 councillors.
Other councillors will only be given bodyguards after threat and risk analysis by the police, according to the improved perks revealed by Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des van Rooyen.
He has also approved the reintroduction of mayoral residences as a housing benefit for mayors where municipalities already have council-owned properties, and the use of municipal vehicles by councillors.
In the circular, which Independent Media has seen, Salga boasts that it has successfully lobbied for the perks.
It states that some of the newly introduced features include a sitting allowance for district municipality councillors of R1 020 a day on top of their salaries, a standardised cellphone allowance of R3 400 for all councillors, formalising the inclusion of laptops as tools of the trade for part-time councillors and providing tablets as alternatives to laptops.
The SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) has described the improved perks as “defying logic” and demanded that they be rescinded as they were likely to cost millions of rand.
Samwu spokesperson Papikie Mohale said during the next round of wage negotiations at the end of January the union’s negotiators would use the improved perks to show that municipalities can afford the 15% or R3 155 a month wage hike workers are demanding.
Workers want a new minimum wage of R10 000 a month from July next year. “Councils will be wasting resources, it defies logic. Everyone now qualifies to get bodyguards,” said Mohale.
Mohale said the move was irresponsible by Van Rooyen’s department and Salga.
“We urge councils with the interests of their communities at heart not to implement these,” said Mohale.
Mayors, speakers and bodyguards would exploit loopholes in the tools of trade document as it did not specify the number of bodyguards officials were entitled to, he said.
In 2013, the Sunday Tribune reported that uMgungundlovu District Municipality mayor at the time, Yusuf Bhamjee, and his deputy Thandiwe Zungu shared 16 bodyguards who cost R1.3 million a year.
Van Rooyen said he had consulted all nine provincial co-operative governance MECs before approving the perks.
Salga boss Lance Joel and leaders of the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union were not available for comment.