Bodyguards now a perk for mayors
WHILE enormous perks, including bodyguards for all mayors and speakers, are on the cards for all Northern Cape councillors, angry municipal workers will use this 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.
As a category 5 municipality, Sol Plaatje Executive Mayor, Mangaliso Matika, will see his total remuneration package increase form R921 912 a year to R968 008. The new package for the Speaker will be R774 405, while members of the Mayoral Committee, who are also full-time councillors, will receive R726 005.
The remaining Sol Plaatje councillors, who are all part-time, will receive an annual remuneration package of R306 338.
Van Rooyen has also approved the reintroduction of mayoral residences and furniture as a housing benefit for mayors where municipalities already have council-owned properties, and the use of municipal vehicles by councillors.
In the circular, Salga states that it has successfully lobbied for the perks.
Some of the newly introduced features include a sitting allowance for district municipality councillors of R1 020 a day on top of their salaries, 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.
Full-time councillors are also entitled to office space and furniture, parking bays, business cards, calculators, letterheads, stationery, toner cartridges, diaries, postage costs, office telephone and appropriate mobile technology and multi-digital office equipment.
The SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) has described the improved perks as “defying logic” and demanded that they be rescinded as they were likely to cost millions of rands.
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 could 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.
The current minimum wage in local government is R6 845 a month.
“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.
He added that 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.
Mohale gave as an example Tlhalefi Mashamaite, the former mayor of Mogalakwena Local Municipality in Limpopo, who had 27 bodyguards at the height of his battle with senior officials and other councillors over three years ago.
Mohale said bodyguards made mayors detached from the residents they are supposed to serve.
“They are inaccessible to communities,” he said.
According to Mohale, even half of the R3 400 a month cellphone allowance for all councillors also did not make sense at all as many did not return calls from residents reporting their issues.
Mohale said municipal office workers had to work unpaid overtime to complete their tasks as they did not have laptops. Others were working in dangerous conditions without personal protective equipment.
Van Rooyen said he had consulted all nine provincial co-operative governance
MECs before approving the perks.
In addition to the new perks, councillors have risk insurance taken by municipalities of R1.5-million for their houses and R750 000 for their cars, while they also have life and disability insurance cover that is twice their annual salaries.