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What exactly is happening at the Harare City Council with regards to the retrenchment exercise carried out recently? Surely, the city management must not take residents for granted and divert money meant for service delivery to pay salaries for retrenched workers that are now being re-hired.
The residents were jubilant recently when the city announced that it was retrenching more than 1 000 workers with a net effect of cutting the monthly salary bill by US$2 million.

While the residents were still in a jovial mood, hoping the exercise would result in more money being channelled to critical areas, the city announced that it had in fact made a mistake.

Most of the retrenched workers will be back at work because management suddenly realised that among the retrenched staff were critical ones and that council cannot function properly without them.

Surely, it will be difficult for residents to take city council managers seriously, after such bungling.

The city council will now spend more money re-hiring the retrenched workers to fill critical posts that fell vacant following the so-called rationalisation.

What this means is that the retrenched workers who benefited from their hefty retrenchment packages will find themselves back at work within a few months and earning their normal salaries.

Obviously, the workers will not be asked to return the benefits received from retrenchment to the council and this is why we smell a big rat in all this exercise.

Someone, somewhere within the council must have reaped huge financial benefits after deliberately undertaking the exercise which they knew was futile.

It is a rule for all corporates that retrenchments are not carried out just to get rid of staff and save some money.

Retrenchments do not also mean that an organisation must stop functioning, but are meant to ensure it becomes effective.

Why someone at the city council failed to realise that retrenchment would result in the city’s inability to meet residents’ demands on service delivery boggles the mind.

Unless this was a deliberate move, then the city council has to give proper explanations on why it suddenly realised it had made everyone who mattered go home.

If it was not deliberate, then it means the city officials plunged into the exercise without a proper corporate strategy and just as a way of trying to be seen to be doing something to save ratepayers’ money.

We are told that the retirees will be given a one-year, fixed performance-based contract, while the city looks for suitable replacements and surely this is not a cost-cutting measure.

What is shocking in all this saga is that the identification of critical and non-critical positions was undertaken after the retrenchment exercise.

There is no precedent to such a retrenchment exercise and this is why we doubt the sincerity of the city officials.

It is difficult to buy into the council’s excuse that rehiring some of the retired staff who have critical skills would enhance service delivery.

Why let them go in the first place if they were critical to service delivery? City clinics, for instance, were left with skeletal staff after the majority of nurses applied for retrenchment and got approvals.

This a scandal which must attract the attention of relevant authorities like the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing.

Those responsible must be made accountable for a clear case of abusing the ratepayers’ funds and justice must be applied without fear or favour.