Maravi

Government harmonises salaries in councils

Government harmonises salaries in councils
By Henry Sinyangwe
Sun 08 July 2012, 13:24 CAT

THE government has harmonised and rationalised salaries and conditions of service for workers in the local government service.

Speaking during the signing ceremony of the collective agreements for unionized workers in councils countrywide in Lusaka on Friday, permanent secretary for the Public Service Management Division Dr Roland Msiska said there was need to harmonize the salaries and conditions of service across the councils' establishments to enable equal pay for equal work so that the workers were motivated.

He said each employee would be entitled to housing, transport, health and funeral allowances.

"Each council shall have the following conditions of service to cater for the life cycle needs of the employees: graded increase as opposed to across the board increases, introduce a comprehensive mandatory health and funeral insurance, consolidate all remuneration allowances into basic salary, retain duty facilitating allowances and move them into recurrent expenditure and maintain housing and transport allowance for the purpose of managing payroll and conditions of service in the entire Local Government Service as a percentage of basic salary," he said.

Dr Msiska said this will be effective after a physical head count is conducted in all the councils to avoid ghost workers.

And Local Government Association of Zambia representative Dan Longwe said the local authorities should ensure improved service delivery following government's decision to look into their plight.

"This may not be the best but it is good as a starting point so I would urge the local authorities to improve service delivery to the communities as government has showed that it is committed to listening to our cries," said Longwe.

Prior to 1996, the councils had one salary structure and their conditions of service were determined centrally through negotiations. However, after 1996, a decision was made that the various councils would use the existing salary structure but were given the mandate to determine their own salaries and conditions of service depending on the capacities of the councils to generate revenue, which led to distortions and low basic pay for the workers.

Labels: COUNCILS, SALARIES

posted by MrK @ 5:32 PM