Durban - The plan by eThekwini Municipality to cut spending on overtime pay in favour of employing more people has failed to deliver as only one person has been appointed since the decision was taken four months ago.
This is according to a report tabled recently before the Human Settlements and Infrastructure Services committee.
The report detailed the number of vacancies that needed to be filled and found that out of hundreds of vacancies, only one had been filled.
In August last year the municipality resolved to cut the overtime budgets across all units by 50%, this was expected to net the city a saving of several hundred million rand, which it could then use to hire more people.
Deputy mayor Philani Mavundla, chairperson of the Human Settlements and Infrastructure Committee and architect of the cuts for overtime, revealed recently that little or no savings had been achieved so far as any savings had been depleted through the abuse of overtime again.
As an example, he said the electricity unit had spent R12 million in one month on overtime, and R8m of that was claims from people who had worked 50 hours or more, which is illegal.
At the time he made the call to cut overtime, Mavundla said it was unethical that one individual could claim thousands of rand in overtime pay while another sat at home, unemployed.
Speaking to The Mercury on the issues last week, Mavundla admitted they had faced challenges in the filling of the posts, saying hundreds of vacancies needed to be filled.
The report said for the auxiliary services there were 66 vacancies, but none had been filled, and 33 were with the city manager for approval.
In customer service, there were 68 posts, none had been filled; 13 were with the city manager for approval.
In engineering and data service there were 13 posts, without any of them filled, and 10 were at advertising and interview level.
At the sanitation operation, there were 188 vacancies and none had been filled; a request to begin the process to fill the posts was submitted on November 14.
Only scientific services has made slight forward movement, where out of its seven vacancies, one had been filled. In water operations, there were 65 vacancies and 54 of these were at the city manager level for approval.
DA councillor Mzamo Billy said it was disappointing to note that the municipality had not prioritised the filling of vacancies.
“We supported the idea of cutting overtime because there were clear signs that overtime pay was being abused in many departments, particularly in water and sanitation, electricity, DSW and metro police. We also supported the 50% cut because there was a commitment that the vacancies would be filled,” he said.
ADeC councillor Visvin Reddy said Mavundla must take full responsibility for the disruptions caused by water and electricity staff because of cuts in overtime.
“Mavundla made it a campaign of his to cut overtime and employ more staff. This never materialised. He needs to learn that sudden changes to staff working conditions will be met with resistance and ought to have been managed more effectively,” he said.