Mnyimba lays the blame on his predecessors

The Amathole district municipality was being blamed for trying to buck the traditional business system, its top-paid municipal manager Thandekile Mnyimba said.

He said the ADM was topheavy with management specialists at the sharp end of the top of the employment triangle, while competent “doers” occupied the bottom anchor area.

He claimed this unwieldy, hugely cost-inefficient system was put in place “well before my time”. He said one of his most important tasks, identified early on in his tenure, was to turn the triangle upside down to address that the numbers of high-earning managers far exceeded the numbers of artisans and drivers.

In 2017, when he arrived, the salary bill took up 52% of income. The norm for municipalities, he said, was 35-40%.

In his first year he got it down to 48% and in 2018, it was on track to reach hit 44%, “but strike action and increases took it to

53%”.

He said he was aware of rumours that people were scared of him, but he did not agree with this view.

He said people were panicking about his goal of “beefing up the number of workers and getting shot of non-performing suits”.

He said whistle-blower accusations that there had been huge staff cuts were untrue and that the total staff complement would remain at current levels.

But he said the “deadwood at the top would be given the opportunity to depart gracefully”, and then ADM would be on a recruitment drive.

“As a municipality, ADM has delivered a poor service to the people,” Mnyimba said.

He added that his quest to change that had made him “a very unpopular person”.

He said he had inherited a broke organisation, caused mainly by a few “illegal activities”.

He said there was “bus employment”, where 543 people got employed in one year.

“These people came in as general assistants and three months later they became clerks and practitioners [artisans].

“This strained the municipality. We have useless people that are here.”

When the previous administration took over, ADM had R500m in reserves, according to Mnyimba.

“They cleaned up those reserves [because] of salary increases and other things,” he said.

People were panicking about his goal of beefing up the number of workers and getting shot of non-performing suits