Anger as wage increases on hold
The national cabinet representative (NCR) is hard at work to bring Enoch Mgiima Local Municipality (EMLM) finances into order, tackling the municipal wage bill which constitutes the bulk of the budget after electricity.
Employees who were supposed to be getting their annual increment on Friday will only be receiving it in December. Meanwhile, the municipal manager announced the NCR was investigating the 68 alleged ghost employees in the municipality after receiving a report from the last provincial administrator.
EMLM municipal manager Nokuthula Zondani told protesting workers in Friday’s meeting there was a report which stated there were 68 ghost employees.
“We appeal to people appearing on that list to do a verification which is being carried out by the NCR and EMLM corporate services to ascertain whether we have ghost employees or not,” Zondani said.
She said Monday was the extension date before the issue was concluded. Community services and technical services were the only two departments that
had not yet been verified.
On Friday and Monday, municipal workers were off work, upset over the 4.8 and 3.5% increments which did not reflect in their bank accounts.
This meant garbage was not collected, some electricity faults were not attended to and the traffic department was affected.
On Monday employees gathered at the Thobi Kula Indoor Sports Centre at 9am waiting to hear from their leaders about the increments.
This was after Samwu secretary Thabo Ngwane and Imato chair Msimbithi Ntloko had called on officials to address employees themselves concerning the salary increases.
Political and administrative leaders were all present to plead with employees. Zondani said the 4.8% would not be implemented until there was money in the municipality. “We are still doing administrative work concerning the 3.5 %.”
EMLM speaker Noluthando Nqabisa said the NCR had told them to rescind the resolution that employees would be receiving an increment.
“When the NCR came we were doing our budget. We were told to cut our budget by R133m because the previous budget was unfunded and we had a deficit of more than R80m, which meant we had spent R80m we did not have.”
Workers were concerned about the tax that will be implemented on their increment in December, but the speaker assured them this would be deducted from the municipality.
The Rep received a copy of an email addressed to the municipal manager by the NCR, Dr Monde Tom, asking for the increment to be rescinded.
Tom said he was informed about the concerns of the CFO, who was under pressure to effect salary increases for employees and proposed upper limits of salaries for councillors.
“The municipality’s employee-related costs do not have funding.”
The NCR wrote that it was concerning the municipality, without alternative money, approved the payment of increased salaries.
“The NCR team’s assessment has been (that staff were) overpaid and over-graded over several years. The employees who were supposed to repay have, instead, been given more increases,” the email read.
The unions felt the managers should have informed the trade unions sooner about the matter.
Ngwane said: “Section 8 of the Labour Act speaks about consultation whenever there are going to be changes in the workforce. They are not implementing that.”
Ntloko said: “We must not be seen as against the NCR, but when the managers receive information affecting labour, they should inform us. As a stakeholder, we are being undermined.”