BULAWAYO City Council (BCC) is seriously understaffed and efforts to recruit professionals to fill vacant posts have hit a brick wall as the Local Government ministry has ignored the local authority’s request.
This emerged during a meeting organised by the Public Policy and Research Institute of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo on Monday under the theme: Post-electoral political and economic landscape in Zimbabwe: Implications on service delivery.
Ward 23 councillor Ntombizodwa Khumalo told participants that council was battling a serious brain drain at a time when it is understaffed.
"We are losing the health professionals, especially nurses. Every month each and every meeting there is a report of resignations due to poor remuneration among other reasons,” Khumalo said.
Khumalo said the mass resignations impacted negatively on service delivery.
"As a local authority we are understaffed. We need about 1 452 employees but we cannot employ them. We are just waiting for approval from central government," Khumalo said.
"I think about three to four months back we applied for approval to employ about 400 employees and last month we applied for approval for 500 employees but so far there has been no response from local government. There are many things that are derailing service delivery."
Ward 3 councillor Mxolisi Mahlangu said 90% of council machinery was obsolete.
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"A lot of people are migrating to Europe while some are even opting to quit and stay at home because of the poor salaries,” he said.
"That is the predicament that we find ourselves in.”
Mahlangu said there was a deliberate ploy to cripple local authorities as seen in the failure by the Local Government ministry to approve BCC’s request to employ professionals to fill vacant posts.
"As a third tier of government because of politics we do not even have authority to hire a sweeper. Even at a point we want to hire we need authority because that is a deliberate means of making sure that we do not function as a council from the opposition. It takes forever to get that approval," Mahlangu said.
Local Government minister Winston Chitando was not reachable for comment yesterday.
PPRZ director Gorden Moyo, however, hailed the local authority for its efforts to improve service delivery despite the harsh economic climate.
