Durban ratepayers have given proposed salary increases for eThekwini Municipality staff the red light, citing poor service as their chief gripe.
During an eThekwini executive committee (Exco) meeting on Tuesday, the City’s leadership confirmed its support for eThekwini municipal manager, Musa Mbhele, to negotiate a new salary and wage collective agreement.
The municipality said the facilitators’ proposal, to be effective from July 1 this year, would span five years, ending on June 30, 2029. The previous agreement expired on June 30 this year, necessitating negotiations that began last month.
Exco officials retrospectively approved mandates for two crucial negotiation processes: one concerning the salaries, allowances, and benefits of municipal council members, and the other focused on a new salary and wage collective agreement for municipal staff.
The first mandate involves negotiating the upper limits of remuneration for council members for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years. A report tabled at the Exco, which included a request from the SA Local Government Association, proposed a 3% annual increase for 2023/24 and a 2.5% increase for 2024/25.
The municipality said adjustments would be made to population bands based on the 2021 census results and increases in remuneration packages and allowances would be implemented for both full-time and part-time councillors.
The facilitators’ proposal includes a 4.5% salary increase starting on July 1, 2024, followed by an additional 1.5% increase in March 2025.
For the subsequent years, salary increases would be based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), with adjustments ranging from CPI plus 0.75% to CPI plus 1.25%. Benefits linked to salary increases would rise accordingly, with housing allowances and medical aid increasing by 4.5%.
The proposal also addresses housing investigations for employees earning less than R22 000 who do not receive housing allowances or subsidies, with a deadline set for March 31, 2025.
Bluff Ratepayers and Residents Association chairperson Norman Gilbert said that increasing salaries of municipal staff and councillors amid service delivery issues was a complex matter.
“While staff welfare is important, it is crucial to prioritise essential services and address the challenges first,” he said.
Funds should be prioritised towards infrastructure development and maintenance; staff training and capacity building; addressing the root causes of service delivery issues; and implementing efficient management systems would be more justifiable than salary increases at this stage, Gilbert said.
The recent water outage in Durban North highlighted the need to prioritise infrastructure maintenance and upgrading.
Deputy chairperson of the Westville Ratepayers Association and eThekwini Ratepayers Protest Movement, Rose Cortes, said until rivers were clean and there was water in every tap in the metro, no one at City level should be getting an increase.
She stressed that every district in the city had suffered from water issues.
“The crisis that is the broken sewer systems across the metro has also been neglected owing to officials citing ‘no budget’. Yet three budgets have been approved since the flood collapses – and spillages still run unabated into our rivers and the ocean. New Germany is a case in point.
“The City continues to blame companies for the pollution but is refusing to fix the broken sewer line meant to carry licensed waste away for treatment.”
The constant tariff increases imposed on residents who did not see annual wage increases in line with the rising costs were unsustainable, Cortes said, and consumers were bleeding out.
If anything, upper management should be taking salary cuts for negligence and non-performance, she said.
“When councillors across the party spectrum finally start speaking for their constituents instead of their parties, maybe then they will deserve an increase.”
uMhlanga Ratepayers and Residents Association chairperson Terry MacLarty said the whole of Durban North had had no water for the past week.
“I have no problem remunerating people for doing their jobs efficiently. A huge portion of the eThekwini budget goes to staff costs, but there is no performance management to hold people accountable.”
She said if this had been a private corporate company, many of those managers would find themselves without a job. They were almost in protected employment at ratepayers’ expense.
MacLarty said, “We need to see improvements in service delivery before even thinking about increasing salaries. Some underprivileged areas get absolutely no service.”
MacLarty appealed to eThekwini Mayor Cyril Xaba to get his team to perform optimally. They were fortunate to have jobs, she said.
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