WORKERS at Chinsali Municipal Council (CMC) have gone 11 months without salaries, sparking anxiety among the employees in the newly established provincial capital of Muchinga.
The CMC is now scouting for K1.5 billion to clear the outstanding salary arrears as it seeks to become a fully operational municipality following its recent upgrade from being a district council.
Acting Chinsali Town Clerk, Handson Kachenjela and workers talked to during the week confirmed that they had gone almost one year without getting their salaries.
Mr Kachenjela said there was anxiety among the workers and hoped the local authority would be able to find money to clear the arrears.
“We have so many challenges here especially with this upgrade from district council to municipal council. The biggest challenge is that our revenue base is so thin that we have struggled to pay salaries for our workers.
“As I speak to you now, we have 11 months’ salary arrears and our revenue sources at the moment cannot give us something to clear that, we are just hoping that the valuation roll can be updated,” he said.
Mr Kachenjela said the property valuation roll had not been updated since 1993, further worsening the situation.
He said the council was also using 1993 charges when collecting rates from property owners and appealed to the valuation department to help update the roll and bail out the local authority.
“We need the valuation department to come and help us by updating the valuation roll. We are targeting to raise about K130 million per month which can help us clear the arrears,” he said.
He cited Tazama which was still paying K1 million per year as property rates based on old charges.
Mr Kachenjela also noted that new individual and institutional properties had been put up over the years but had remained outside the valuation roll because the list had not been updated for the past 19 years.
Some workers interviewed said there was desperation among the employees as they did not have any idea when their salary arrears would be cleared.
“There is a lot of anxiety here, as you know that 11 months is not a short period and we are wondering if this will be cleared,” said one of the workers who did not want to be named.
He said following the upgrading of the local authority, the expectations were high both within the council and the country at large to ensure that the provincial capital met the required standards.
Chinsali, the headquarters of the newly-created Muchinga Province, has produced high-profile individuals who include first Republican president Kenneth Kaunda and late freedom fighter Simon Kapwepwe.
[Times of Zambia]
This challenge doesn’t affect chinsali alone, but almost all councils in the country. mambwe faces similar challenges with no apparent end in sight.
and you thought slavery had ended.
Populist politics demand that people hear pronouncements that will make the author be seen as Umwaume and clever. Visionary leaders count the cost of delivering a service before they make a strategical statement. Populists utter words that are an end in themselves, assuming they have delivered a service or achieved an objective ……a weaknes lacking indepth analysis almost always arising from defficiency in education. Pronouncements of new provincial centres and new districts sounded a good idea but not so good only on paper. Current budget never mentioned any capital and sunk costs associated with such undertakings. Failure to pay council pea nut workers wages is a child’s play. How does Sata dream of sustaining provicials and districts wokers wages? Action speaks louder than words.
This is the case when one uneducated president just wakes up and starts burking as rabied dog in the name of MCS.
The worst is yet to come. Taste of your own vote. Keep crying! Iol
For as long Zambians are satisfied with dysfunctional councils since independence the status quo shall remain. 48 years down the road, just busy bungling from experiment to experiment when we all know what the solution should be. And I wonder why we use the same institutions for elections. Perhaps Barotses are right.
May da Government intervene 11months iz too much.
man of action,MCS will end up ‘creating’ maybe 3 or 4 districts out of Chinsali when he catches this story.
As it is with Mbala Municipal council 11 month without pay and salaries are pathetic unionized worker highest paid 1200 000 lowest paid 400 000 please we do have a family to look after and if we decide to resign nowhere to go yet the President said they have increased grants by 100 %. Which is clap to us please Mr Sata we need more money in our pockets.
Come on Zambians, tell me of any country in the world where supposedly educated people would be praising their govt for approving something as routine as a business licence be it for building a mine, hotel or a shop? Is this how low the country has sunk? How childish! For your information this mine will cost a billion dollars to build. A 400 000 tonne capacity smelter is also planned to be built in solwezi. All this information has been in the public domain on the company website and other mining websites from early last year.
They don’t even need those salaries; they are making enough from bribery and theft! Just keep them reporting for work…
us we got K225 000 in July as part payment while the senior management got K2,000, 000 each awe kwena twalachula. twashitilefye amalasha, nakaunga na beans ishala twawesha negogole pashops. mmm! aweee mweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee kuti waleka no ku vota…….
government is trying to improve condition of service for all the workers in ministry of local government and housing soon or later you be getting salaries and wages on monthly bases. Thank you for voting PF government under the able leadership of Ba tata Sata.