Durban - The eThekwini Municipality needs to come up with an extra R20 million this year if it wants to keep its cemeteries, beaches and public halls open.
The money is to pay for the overtime of thinly stretched staff at the Parks, Recreation and Culture Unit, it says.
Head of the unit, Thembinkosi Ngcobo, in a report to the city’s Community and Emergency Services Committee on Thursday, said, based on the first three months’ expenditure of the financial year, they expected to overspend on their annual overtime budget by about R19.5m.
He said there were 12 divisions within the unit where overtime was deemed essential for service delivery, including cemeteries, beaches, public halls, zoos and parks, emergency tree teams and mechanical services.
Last year the unit was the centre of a public outcry after it slashed overtime pay, resulting in cemeteries and public halls closing early on weekends, and limited lifeguards on the beaches.
It was only after the intervention of city manager, S’bu Sithole, and a commitment by the city to pay overtime, that services resumed.
The report on Thursday said the unit’s overtime costs had exceeded the annual budget provision allocation over the past eight years on “an increasingly upward spiral”.
According to the report, strict control methods had been introduced to ensure only essential overtime was approved to provide value for money service delivery.
Figures presented to councillors on Thursday revealed that the unit spent, on average, R4m a month on overtime.
“The main reason why the department has exceeded its overtime budget allocations is due to the increased number of facilities being handed over and or newly built (facilities) for which no additional human resources have been provided,” the report said.
“A critical vacancies schedule report has for the past three years been prepared indicating that the required additional staffing complement numbers for the operational, maintenance and running of these facilities amounts to R10m, which however has been declined by the relevant committee.
“This results in the existing staff incurring overtime costs to ensure that the service delivery is not compromised, including some staff exceeding the Labour Relations Act of not more than 40 hours a month overtime expenditure – simply due to the shortage of staff to cover all the facilities where events and functions are being held.”
A further strain on the overtime expenditure, the report noted, was the extended night hours operations where the seven central beachfront ablution facilities were to be kept open 24 hours a day.
“The committee should also realise that the upcoming elections will necessitate a number of staff to be on overtime because most of the department’s halls will be required for polling stations for which staff are not compensated.”
DA councillor, Martin Meyer, said he did not understand why the city was not filling critical vacancies.
“Year after year we get caught out by (overtime expenditure) and we don’t do anything about it. We need to sort this out,” he said.
Patrick Pillay of the Minority Front agreed.
“We need to get the people at the Treasury to fill the vacancies in this cluster once and for all,” he said.
Zandile Gumede, chairwoman of the committee, said there were various processes that needed to be followed before a vacancy could be filled.
“eThekwini (municipality) is a huge organisation. You cannot go to sleep one night and wake up the next day and employ someone,” she said.
Daily News