City seeks more space for its office workers

THE ethekwini Municipality is seeking alternative office space for its finance department employees in line with Covid-19 regulations, to mitigate the risk of staff being infected.

According to a department report presented at yesterday’s special virtual executive committee meeting, staff are housed in different offices around the city, and mainly in the Florence Mkhize building.

“The Covid-19 regulations require the modification of the seating arrangements within the working space to observe physical distancing and safety of the employees. The issue of physical distancing will also have an impact should there be employees that are infected by the virus.

“The number of employees who will be deemed as contacts will increase. This will affect both the productivity of the organisation as well as the well-being of the staff,” read the report.

The report stated that during consultation with the local labour forum on the return-to-work plans and the up-scaling of staff numbers in Florence Mkhize building, it was agreed that 50% of staff should return to work.

“This means that staff will only be at work every second day, which has a severe impact on productivity and performance output. It was, therefore, obvious to look for alternate accommodation to ensure we have a full staff complement on a daily basis without compromising safety of staff,” said the report.

Targeted facilities for alternate accommodation are the International Convention Centre and the revenue contact centre in the Smart Exchange building. The department proposes to negotiate with the landlord of the Smart Exchange for an additional 450 square metres.

It would have cost the city just over R1.6 million a month to rent the ICC. However, this has been negotiated down to R1m a month.

The Smart Exchange building currently costs the city R95 a square metre. The additional 450 square metres will cost the city about R 42 750 a month.

DA caucus leader Nicole Graham supported the item.

“It is not ideal to be incurring additional expenditure at this time, but there does need to be space for staff to work without being too close to one another,” she said.

The IFP’S Mdu Nkosi also agreed, saying having more employees in the finance department would enable the city to recover some of the billions in revenue lost since the lockdown.