Angry council employees, including those from the critical health department, were demanding that Tanyanyiwa pay them salaries backdated for six months.
All council operations last week came to a standstill. The bereaved were stranded with bodies that needed to be buried and residents had to put up with piling refuse. The guzzlers were also affected as all council beer halls were closed. Residents who wanted to pay their bills returned home with their money because there was no one to attend to them.
Speaking to ***The Zimbabwean***the Town’s Workers Representative, Wilson Benhura, said workers, most of who were residents of Chitungwiza, had gone on strike because of unresolved grievances such as overdue salaries, corruption in the council and general poor working conditions.
A banner written by employees and posted on the gate leading to the councils premises read “Town Clerk Godfrey Tanyanyiwa must go; No to selling of council property; no to workers victimisation, no to privatising of public toilets and no to secret salary payroll.
Benhura said employees had gone for long without receiving their salaries and their efforts to involve the council fathers had not yielded positive results.
“For six months we have not been paid, he said.
He said Tanyanyiwa had no respect for workers and had refused to meet with worker representatives. The few times he had met them, he said, Tanyanyiwa had used insulting language.
Sources at the council revenue department said that the town collected at least US$ 100 000 in revenue on a daily basis while the monthly salary bill for general workers excluding middle and top management, was believed to be about US$680 000.
“We only handle the salaries of grade one to grade 12 workers, however we do not know how much those in grade 13 to 18 get,” said the aggrieved worker from the Accounts section.
He said this was the reason why workers were demanding an end to secretive payrolls. He said workers believed Tanyanyiwa, who is a relative of Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo, was taking all the money. He is a former campaign manager for Chombo during the 2008 harmonised elections so workers believed his appointment to the council was a reward.
Apart from failing to pay its workers, the council had come under fire from residents who complained of a poor service despite the huge revenues it collected from its beer halls, clinics commercial and residential properties and general service delivery in the town.
The council had failed to open public toilets and provide clean water to most residents. Refuse was piling while roads were full of potholes.
The strike affected the dead too
It was a hectic day for people who wanted to bury their beloved ones at the Chitungwiza cemetery last week as grave diggers joined the strike over salaries that paralysed the operations of the town.
There was pandemonium as funeral undertakers jostled to get into the closed offices of the council to purchase graves for their clients. Graves cost US$70.00.
John Mukuguta, Director of Heaven Funeral Services said, “At the moment we do not know what to do, but we have been promised that we will be served so that we will be able to bury the dead.”
Funeral parlours in the town charge anything between US$15 and US$20 to store bodies per night and once a body is taken home as per custom they rarely accepted the bodies back.
“A body can only spend a night at home and then go for burial, at Heaven Funeral Assurance we do not accept bodies that would have been taken home,” said Mukugatu.
Grave diggers who spoke to ***The Zimbabwean*** said they had also downed tools because they needed their money.
“We are all here as we also want to be paid, even our boss is here so if people proceed to the cemetery they will find no-one to assist them,” said one grave digger who refused to be named.
Due to the economic situation in Zimbabwe many people are failing to take their dead relatives to the rural areas where burial is cheaper.
Post published in: World News