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Mail & Guardian reports that over the past seven years the City of Mbombela has failed to reduce its staggering R160 million annual overtime bill, despite the Mpumalanga municipality having introduced “cost curtailment measures”.
Mbombela’s overtime bill for municipal staff peaked at R14 million a month in 2016, with the consistent failure to bring it down sparking concern among opposition parties, who wanted the municipality to fill vacancies and enforce consequence management on errant council departments. In February, opposition parties tried to secure an intervention from Mpumalanga cooperative governance and traditional affairs MEC Mandla Msibi, who faced several questions in the provincial legislature over the debacle. At the time, Msibi said that steps were being taken by the municipality to reduce overtime costs and that consequence management was being implemented against those responsible for driving up the costs. But the bill has still not been reduced and is, according to Mbombela FF+ councillor Ken Robertson, unacceptably increasing, even though not by much. “The overtime bill is still standing at R14 million a month. We have a massive number of vacancies across departments, which contributes heavily to the annual bill. One would think that these would be filled, but they haven’t,” Robertson noted. He added: “A lot has to do with people not doing work during regular hours because they want to work overtime and make extra money. There is poor management and poor monitoring, and the bill hasn’t been reduced at all.” A municipality spokesperson said the overtime issue was “being investigated” and that a report would be tabled before council in due course.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Paddy Harper at Mail & Guardian (subscriber access only)
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