Residents up in arms over council salaries.

Residents of Gwanda woke up to "shocking" Monday morning news that the town clerk of the small town is earning a salary of $17 000 per month.

In a news article flighted in the Southern Eye, Town Clerk Mr Gilbert Mlilo Town is reportedly earning $16 923, 87 per month, almost double what his Bulawayo counterpart Middleton Nyoni earns. Nyoni gets $9 439,19.

Mlilo's basic pay is $6 766,37, but his take home is bumped up by numerous allowances, which include responsibility ($2 706,55) professional ($2 368,23), retention ($2 368,23), telephone ($1 014,96), cellphone allowance ($1 014,96) and housing and car benefits of $278,58 according to the newspaper.

The top five council employees are reported to be pocketing amongst themselves over US$62 000 every month. Housing director Sipho Mdlongwa's monthly package amounts to $11 860,89, town engineer Phakamile Ndebele and treasurer Xolani Dube earn $11 637,76 and $11 437, 76 respectively while chamber secretary Priscilla Nkala earns $10 965,97.

The salaries to council executives come at a time when the Municipality has been battling with service delivery to an extent that some residents in the town have completely forgotten about ever going to get piped water in their houses and refuse collected from their door steps. Residents have also been complaining bitterly about crime in the town which according to them is increased by lack of street lighting at night.

Contacted for a comment, the Mayor of the town Councillor Knowledge Ndlovu confirmed that his executive employees were indeed getting paid the figures stated.

"Its true the salaries of the executive members are in that region" said Ndlovu in a telephone interview.

Asked what his council was going to do about the huge wage bill, the mayor said the issue was no longer in his council's hands but it was an issue for the Ministry to sort out.

"We have handed the figures to the Minister of Local Government who is going to handle the issue and advice us accordingly," said Ndlovu.

Asked if his council was managing to pay that kind of a wage, Ndlovu indicated that Gwanda like all other local authorities was battling with the salaries. Confirmed reports from council indicate that the lowest paid council worker is taking home a net salary of $235.00 per month and council currently owes its workers two months salaries.

Former Mayor and senior resident of Gwanda Mr Redo Mpofu expressed shock at the salaries paid by council promising to confront the Mayor about the issue.

"That's shocking news to me, I will have to talk to the mayor later today and confirm if indeed council is paying such salaries," said Mpofu.

"But you see with news of some people earning more than $200 000 every month I am not surprised that council could be paying the Town Clerk $16 000.00. What is $16 000 compared to $200 000?," concluded Mpofu.

The spokesperson for the Interim Gwanda Residents Association Mr Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo said he was equally shocked by the figures.

"Its shocking and residents have every reason to complain about these salaries if the figures are correct.

"We complained when the budget was presented to residents and council that the over 70% expenditure on employee costs was too much little did we know that a huge percentage of it goes to just a few people," said Maduma - Fuzwayo

Asked what his association will do about the matter going forward, Maduma - Fuzwayo indicated that they will seat as a committee and discuss this and other issues presented to them by residents but emphasised that their challenge at the moment as an interim committee is the mandate to handle the issues as they are still busy with finalising the registration of the association.

"We have several such issues that have already been tabled before us but our challenge which residents must understand is that at the moment we are still an interim committee tasked specifically with the steering of the association before a substantive committee is elected perhaps by June this year."

"We are at the moment basically concentrating on the mobilisation of membership and legalising the association. This however does not stop us handling such issues. We had a meeting with the mayor last week and we are hoping to meet the councillors this week where we are going to be discussing a working document and relations between council and the association. We will however not stop to table all the issues so far presented to us by the residents because some of them are critical and urgent."

The country is at the moment in a state of unease as everyday there is news of shocking salaries earned by public officers are released. Vice President Joyce Mujuru on Saturday promised that the President's office is handling the issue of the outrageous salaries and corruption and that drastic action will be taken. She however castigated the media for publishing these salaries claiming that such publications are causing panic in the country.