News / National
Gweru City Council pay workers
19 Oct 2013 at 05:17hrs | Views
THE Gweru City Council has started paying its workers their September salaries, beginning with the lower grades, the director of finance, Mr Edgar Mwedzi, said yesterday.
In an interview, Mr Mwedzi said the local authority started paying the workers yesterday in batches according to their grades.
The cash strapped local authority needed $566 000 to pay its more than 1 000 workers which it failed to pay last month owing to cash challenges.
In yesterday's issue the wage bill had erroneously been put at $55 000.
"Our salary wage bill is $566 000 and we have been struggling to raise this amount following a significant decrease in revenue collection.
"We only started paying our lower grade employees today (Thursday) and we will only be in a position to pay our middle managers after next week. This means our executives will only get their September salaries in November," he said.
Mr Mwedzi said the council's revenue collection inflow has fallen from about $1,2 million per month to $500 000 following the Government directive on councils to write-off bills accumulated by residents between February 2009 and June this year.
He said the Gweru City Council and other urban councils recently presented their predicament to Government under the Association of Urban Councils seeking assistance.
"As Gweru City Council, we scraped off $8,3 million which we were owed by residents and since then we have been getting something like $500 000 as our monthly revenue collection from an average of between $1 million to $1, 2 million that we used to collect.
"For instance in August, we collected $578 000, " he said.
The city council, however, increased its revenue base collection recently after introducing parking discs in the Central Business District and its immediate peripheries.
In other cities the programme is mainly limited to the CBDs, leaving other parts of the city as free parking zones.
In an interview, Mr Mwedzi said the local authority started paying the workers yesterday in batches according to their grades.
The cash strapped local authority needed $566 000 to pay its more than 1 000 workers which it failed to pay last month owing to cash challenges.
In yesterday's issue the wage bill had erroneously been put at $55 000.
"Our salary wage bill is $566 000 and we have been struggling to raise this amount following a significant decrease in revenue collection.
"We only started paying our lower grade employees today (Thursday) and we will only be in a position to pay our middle managers after next week. This means our executives will only get their September salaries in November," he said.
Mr Mwedzi said the council's revenue collection inflow has fallen from about $1,2 million per month to $500 000 following the Government directive on councils to write-off bills accumulated by residents between February 2009 and June this year.
He said the Gweru City Council and other urban councils recently presented their predicament to Government under the Association of Urban Councils seeking assistance.
"As Gweru City Council, we scraped off $8,3 million which we were owed by residents and since then we have been getting something like $500 000 as our monthly revenue collection from an average of between $1 million to $1, 2 million that we used to collect.
"For instance in August, we collected $578 000, " he said.
The city council, however, increased its revenue base collection recently after introducing parking discs in the Central Business District and its immediate peripheries.
In other cities the programme is mainly limited to the CBDs, leaving other parts of the city as free parking zones.
Source - Chronicle
