R600m bill to hire all EPWP staff

EThekwini contract workers want permanent jobs

THE head of eThekwini Municipality’s Durban Solid Waste (DSW) unit has revealed that the city would need close to R600 million to employ the thousands of workers currently contracted under the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) who are demanding full-time employment.

A few hundred of the 903 staff members contracted under the EPWP and seconded to the DSW unit marched to the Durban City Hall last week demanding permanent jobs.

In a phone interview with The Mercury this week, DSW head Raymond Rampersad said DSW would need almost R120m each year to hire EPWP staff in his unit as permanent staff. This is based on the number of contract employees the unit has and on a full-time city employee on a similar level earning R11 000 a month.

The EPWP workers said they earned close to R3 500 a month.

The city has about 4 600 EPWP employees deployed across other departments also wanting full-time employment and this means it would need close to R600m a year to fund this based on the benchmark salary of R11 000.

EThekwini is spending close to R260m on the employment of EPWP workers across departments.

The workers last week marched to the city hall demanding to be addressed by mayor Mxolisi Kaunda on what was happening with “promises” to hire them on a permanent basis.

At the heart of their complaint was the delay in filling posts advertised by DSW last year. They said the posts should have been filled by February this year but many of the staff in the EPWPDSW programme had not been called for interviews, leading to concerns that something was amiss with the process.

During the march, they accused the municipal officials, especially those handling the EPWP programme for the city and those in DSW, of stalling the process. They accused the municipality of treating them like slaves.

The city took exception to the accusation. Rampersad said the process to hire some of the workers was under way and they would be called next week for interviews.

“In my unit, there are 903 workers from the EPWP working under DSW, there is a great need for all these workers. I can account for the work every single one of them does, they could be deployed to the beach, to the promenade. I need them everywhere, but unfortunately we do not have the funds, but there is a need for them,” he said.

He said they were in the process of filling about 70 vacancies that were funded and “would be calling some of the EPWP staff members” who applied.

“We have spoken to the workers and the leaders to say that (despite 903 of them looking for permanent posts) we only have about 70 posts available.”

He said in the past, they had filled vacant positions in DSW with staff members from the EPWP programme.

“It’s not just the EPWP staff that are in DSW that are demanding full-time employment, the other staff attached to the other departments are demanding the same.”

At the moment, Rampersad said, the city was getting R88m to fund the EPWP programme, but it is spending close to R265m on it each year. This was because funding from the national government had previously been much more than the R88m currently being provided.

He said initially, the idea was that the city would hire workers based purely on, and in-line with, the funding from national government. But when the national government started drawing down on the funding, the city kept the people under the programme employed, leading to the shortfall now being funded by the municipality.

Other sources in the council said that by law, people are allowed in EPWP for no more than two years, but in eThekwini people have been there since 2014.

Rampersad said he knew that the EPWP programme was meant to employ people for a limited time.

Thokozani Phehlukwayo, one of the leaders of the EPWP-DSW staff members, said there was a meeting last week which resolved that selected workers would be called for interviews.

“We are concerned that there could be manipulation of the process – when the posts were advertised there were 80, now there are 70 posts.”

He warned that the city would have to employ all the workers currently under the programme, even if it’s not in this round or in one go.

“We have to be hired or paid out. The EPWP is a two-year programme and therefore this current group of employees should have been out of the programme six years ago. They (city) let us stay on for eight years, I warned them about this, it means they cannot just terminate us,” he said.

Phehlukwayo said that because their official contract expired six years ago, they believe that the last six years they have been working as “full-time staff” of the municipality, and should therefore be employed officially as full-time or be paid out for that period.