Fed up council workers plot countrywide strike

general secretary Kingsley Zulu said the union had no choice, hence the resolution to down tools next week.

Mr Zulu said in an interview in Ndola yesterday that the Ministries of Finance and Local Government had not “satisfactorily” explained the reason for delayed Equalisation Fund which most councils depended on for payment of salaries.

But Local Government Permanent Secretary Amos Malupenga, in a separate interview, attributed the delay in disbursement of funds to system failure at the Ministry of Finance as the payments were being processed manually.

Mr Zulu on the other hand accused Government of treating council workers as “secondary” employees.

The council workers in different parts of the country are owed at least two months` salary arrears and in some cases they have gone several months without salaries.

“First of all, it must be understood that the disbursement of the Equalisation Fund is backed by law. Therefore, it must be paid.

“Since December last year, our line Ministry has been talking about a system failure at the Ministry of Finance. But we have noted that public service workers are not facing similar challenges and they are not being owed salary areas. Why should the development only affect council workers?” Mr Zulu wondered.

Mr Zulu explained that the majority of the councils, especially those in the rural setting, largely depended on the Equalisation Fund for both service provision and payment of salaries.

He said it was time the government paid attention to the plight of council employees.

He explained that the process of migrating employees to the decentralised payroll was also negatively affected because it was very slow.

Mr Zulu said the union had for a long time been pleading with members to remain calm, but that their patience has now run out. On Monday all employees would down tools if the situation remains the same.

But Malupenga maintained that not all council workers were in salary arrears and stated that two weeks ago, Government released Equalisation Fund for February.

“The union knows the position that the money was released recently for last month and we are going through the process to pay. It is not all workers from the 109 local authorities that are in arrears. Some are up to date,” he said.