Govt should take over council wage

GOVERNMENT’S decision to take over the payment of nurses’ salaries for Harare City Council (HCC) and Chitungwiza Municipality on the basis that councils are “failing” to pay them is commendable.

The move is very welcome, but the background is politically disguised — the reason for this mess is wholly concealed.

In March 2013, the Local Government minister (not council) granted HCC employees salaries which were between 2,5 and 3,5 times the salary scales obtaining at the time.

This overpayment applied to all levels — not just senior employees, as is often assumed by those less informed.

What this tragedy meant is that for the best part of six or so years, HCC’s core business was actually paying its workers.

Council was collecting around US$13 million a month and nearly US$10m was going towards the bloated wage bill and its bloated head count. By the way, the top five cash outlays required $19m a month.

The ratepayers of Harare lost around US$500m in remuneration overpayment. Very quickly, the city lost its ability to function and its ability to pay salaries.

In a deadly electioneering ploy a political decision by the minister to write-off over a US$300m debt owed to council in July 2013 was fatal for the dying municipality.

That debt write-off was over two years worth of revenue gone — sending the ailing HCC into the mortuary.

Those who like maths — more than politics — will tell you that the incoming 2013 MDC Alliance council, which I led, stood only a 60% mathematical chance of doing whatever it would have wanted to do for residents — just because of that second stroke of a ministerial pen.

When you put the two wicked decisions together, the mathematical cost of the ministerial interference is close to US$800m.

It means that in 60 months, the minister removed from the elected council 60 months’ worth of revenues — this is a bookkeeping conversation — not even politics!

The politics of it included that because the two main parties in the country have strong labour links. So the conversation about right-sizing the pay packets was rejected.

The fact that most of the councillors and the two political parties involved had immediate family members on the municipal payroll, somehow, made the conversation unpalatable.

The most that could be attempted was to try and remove the vocal mayor — who spent his entire term battling such poor resource allocation.

The other “clever” solution has been to sell scarce council land to pay salaries. As we speak:

The nurses are not likely to like lower government level salaries.

Government should take over the entire municipal payroll — not just for nurses — for an interim period of anything between three and 10 years while the city recovers from the fatal interference by the government over the past years. In this regard, the decision is government’s best ever.