Council workers at Zambezi District Council in the North western province have not been paid their salaries for a the past three years.
The workers who sought amnonmity for fear of being victimised said this in an interview with ZANIS in Zambezi today.
They told ZANIS that they have not been paid their salaries from January 2004 odate and that they only suvive on advances ranging from K50,000 to about K300,000.
The council workers said they are now starving and that their children in tertiary education have since stopped going to school because of lack of money to pay towards their education.
The workers accused the Zambia Allied and Local Authority Workers’ Union (ZALAWU) of being inefficient for failure to protect the workers from being subjected to untold misery.
The council workers further accused managment at the local authority management of betraying them at the expense of service delivery.
But Zambezi District Council Secretary Rodney Mpundu dismissed the allegations saying the local authority only owes its workers 15 months arrears
Mr. Mpundu told ZANIS that the council with a workforce of 50 workers only has wage bill of K25 million per month and therefore could not manage to pay all its employees.
He attributed the problem to the merger resources collected by the local authority mainly from traditional levies such as animal, grain and fish levy, while on commercial basis, the council gets its revenue from ground rates and licensing levies.
Mr. Mpundu said the Council needs K1.8 billion to settle the 15-month salary arrears.
“It is not true that the council has not paid its workforce for 36 months. From time to time we paid them salaries and as far as I am concerned, the Council owes its workers 15 months salary arrears,” he said.
Meanwhile, Zambezi District Council has embarked on a rehabilitation of the Yambezhi Lodge using the K200 million grant it received from government.
Mr. Mpundu said the facelift would enable the local authority to generate more funds in a bid to lessen the dependency syndrome on government.
How is our council run in our country?Can some conversant person to a lay man like myself.
Making someone work diligently for more than a year and go without a salary is incomprehensible to me. The MP in the area should take up such issues and find a lasting solution. That is insane and a lot of crap looking at Zambia’s age in global and economic revolution.