Solwezi council adjust salaries downwards

–Solwezi Municipal Council has drastically reduced salaries for management staff following instruction from the Local Government Service Commission.

The council has reduced the net salaries of employees holding positions of director from K19,849.00 to K8,658.00 per month.

 

At the same time, assistant directors have their salaries cut to K8,106.00 from the previous K14,772.00.

 

This is according to the report of the municipal council Director of Finance, Peter Kasapatu, presented to the recent full council meeting and obtained by ZANIS today.

 

According to the report the council has also adjusted the salaries for Division Four workers classified as G1, G2 and G3.

 

Those in G1 were getting a salary of K2,578.42 per month and will now be getting K1,519.00.

 

Before the downward reduction, those in G2 and G3 were getting K2,344.00 and K2,193.00 respectively but now the take-home pay for G2 will be K1,278.00 while those in G3 will take home K1,072.00.

 

The drastic adjustments in salaries at the local authority follows the instruction by the Local Government Service Commission to all councils across the country to reduce salaries for employees in line with revised conditions of service that harmonised salaries for local authority employees.

 

According to the Director of Finance’s report, the council was supposed to effect the new salary adjustments last year in January following the revision of conditions of service.

 

However, the changes could not be effected due to a non-detrimental clause that required officers who were paid higher salaries to maintain the same pay when transferred to new councils that were paying lower for the same position.

 

But the Local Government Service Commission issued instructions to all councils to disregard the non-detrimental clause and go ahead to adjust the salaries prompting Solwezi Municipal Council to oblige to the drastic adjustments.