The Sunday Mail
Gweru City Council has approved retrenchment of at least 300 employees, including nurses, in a move aimed at reducing costs. However, workers have condemned the move as “insensitive”.
The local authority’s Town Clerk, Ms Elizabeth Gwatipedza, said a full council meeting had recently given nod to the retrenchment exercise.
She said Gweru City Council would now move to implement the resolution.
“It (the retrenchment) is still work in progress. We engaged a consultant to carry out a survey on how we could reduce labour costs and improve service delivery,” said Ms Gwatipedza.
“The consultant did the job and came up with a report which recommended a job evaluation exercise. We presented the report to council and they have adopted it.
“So what this means is that our staff could be reduced from over 1 100 permanent workers to about 790.”
Ms Gwatipedza, however, said was it was still inconclusive and win-win options were being considered between the local authority and the targeted workers.
Zimbabwe Urban Councils Workers’ Union Gweru branch chairperson Mr Kudakwashe Munengiwa questioned council’s intentions, saying it will be insensitive to retrench workers when the city is expanding.
“The Zim-Asset Government policy talks about the creation of jobs. Therefore, for a quasi-Government agent like council to go against Government policy is wrong,” he said.
“What council should be doing instead is to look for ways to generate more money, not to retrench workers.
“In fact, Gweru is a city which is going through rapid expansion and there is need for more labour.”
Gweru is grappling with multiple service delivery challenges which include roads rehabilitation, refuse collection and water reticulation.
