Lukhanji to look at employees' pay

LUKHANJI Municipality has solicited the services of one of the leading auditing firms in South Africa to do an internal study into what employees should earn after workers indicated they were not being remunerated in accordance with a grade four municipality.

Municipal manager (MM) Nolwandle Gqiba, speaking at a press briefing last Friday, said employees had ‘found’ a document penned by the South African Local Government Association (Salga) on the guidelines for salary structures, a document of which the recommendations had not been implemented in Lukhanji.

“Employees have been asking that we do a benchmarking exercise against other grade four municipalities. We have been losing staff to smaller municipalities due to our low salaries. We are losing skills and we can’t attract employees. Deloitte and Touche will do a study on how much employees should earn.”

Salga had been brought in to help with job evaluations.

Gqiba said because Lukhanji had been without an MM and some directors, some administrative processes had been overlooked.

As Lukhanji was due to amalgamate with Tsolwana and Inkwanca after the August 3 polls, employees feared the unknown.

“Employees are concerned what is going to happen to their pensions after the amalgamation. They want to know if their pensions will be carried over or start from the beginning as some have more than 20 years of service. Others want to know what will happen to their positions as other municipalities have the same positions. The political change and technical change management committees are working on the organogram and no employee will be disadvantaged.”

A recruitment drive of skilled employees would take place.

It was not known who the interim MM of the merged Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality would be until the council of the new entity took that decision.