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Yeukai Karengezeka Municipal Correspondent

THE Harare Municipal Workers Union (HMWU) has urged council to urgently review workers’ salaries to levels above the poverty datum line of $2 600.

HMWU executive chairperson Mr Cosmas Bungu said council’s failure to pay its employees reasonable salaries was in contravention of the Constitution that provides for a right to fair and labour practices.

“Salaries of employees should not be below the poverty datum line as this is illegal. Our position on salaries is that the employer through the National Employment Council Social Partnership should review the salaries as soon as possible to a wage that is above the poverty datum line,” he said.

Mr Bungu said the local authority was supposed to take a leaf from the Government that was continuously cushioning its employees.

“The City of Harare should come to the party and take action urgently like what Government is doing.

“We call upon the MDC-led Council to walk the talk as beneficiaries of the workers’ movement hence their status as mayors and councillors today,” he said.

He also castigated recent utterances made by the employer over poor performance of workers.

“How does council expect workers to perform when its giving them peanuts and failing to provide them with proper equipment,” he said.

Mr Bungu said workers in grades 5 to 16 were being given paltry $40 as transport allowance every month despite fuel and transport prices increasing every week.

“How do they expect such an employee to come to work every day, put 100 percent effort in whatever they do and manage to juggle the economic and social hardships. It is hard, but our members are doing it so that at the end of the day service delivery does not deteriorate,” he said.