BCC fails to employ 30 general nurses

BULAWAYO - The cash-strapped Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has failed to employ 30 general nurses a year after government authorised them to fill in the vacant posts.

This comes at a time when the local authority's clinics are operating on skeletal staff in a move that has impacted negatively on the quality of health service delivery.

Acting Town Clerk Sikhangele Zhou told an all stakeholders budget consultative meeting at the Small City Hall on Thursday that council had not filled up the vacancies due to financial constraints.

"We have not been able to employ the 30 nurses because we do not have the money to pay them," said Zhou adding that they had also failed to recruit three engineers to fill up vacant posts in the demanding engineering department.

"We have also not been able to employ three senior engineers because we have failed to attract any. There is this belief that council's salaries are controlled and this has affected our recruitment process because no one is coming forward, we have advertised several times and we can no longer attract the required personnel," she said.

The council is owed at least $82,9m by three major debtors of which residents account for 50 percent of the total amount payable to the local authority.

This has resulted in monthly revenue collection plummeting to less than 50 percent.

BCC says it needs a staff compliment of 5000 but owing to a job freeze, it is currently running on less than 3 600 workers, a development which has a negative impact on service delivery.

Speaking to our sister publication the Daily News, recently Bulawayo Mayor Martin Moyo attributed a sharp increase in overtime allowances to the job freeze.