by Bruce Zvandasara

Harare City Council (HCC) bosses continue to award each other hefty salaries and allowances at the expense of service delivery which has seen 78 cemetery workers resorting to a strike over unhealthy working conditions.

Investigations made the Harare Post revealed that HCC Cemetery workers from Granville (Mbudzi), Warren Hills and Tafara have resorted to sit-ins over poor service delivery from their bosses.

In an interview with one of the affected workers, Harare Post was told that there was unavailability of protective clothing and sanitary amenities yet the bosses keep awarding themselves hefty salaries—Town Clerk going home with a monthly salary of $27 000.

It was revealed that Cemetery workers last received sanitary amenities and protective clothing in January 2017 and since then, these workers have been working under excruciating conditions.

Various political and social commentators have heaped blame on the council over the misappropriation of ratepayers’ funds. The local council is blamed for gobbling so much revenue into salaries and less on service delivery.

The issue of salaries recently torched a storm which stimulated a tribunal investigation into the issue which revealed that the local authority, nine executives were overpaid their retrenchment packages by $1,2 million, while they also reportedly received unbudgeted bonuses in excess of $600 000.

As if it is not enough, on the wake of a Cholera outbreak in Harare, which HCC had failed to contain, the council went on to recruit more than 700 municipal police officers who are currently undergoing training in Harare.

A source privy to the development has alerted the Harare Post of the matter in which he lamented over the misappropriation of funds and lack of foresight on the part of management. It was further reported that the recruitment would bloat the HCC workforce.

Municipal Police officers earn an average of $1000 in salaries and it adds up to $700 000 in salaries added on the already bloated wage bill.