11 July 2009
THE Masaiti District Council (MDC) owes its employees over K400 million in salary arrears that have accumulated for a period of one year.
Council secretary, Noel Ngilishi said in an interview from Masaiti yesterday that the bad financial position of the institution had made it difficult for it to promptly pay workers their salaries.
"Our workers in management have not been paid since September last year while unionised employees are owed salaries accumulating from June," Mr Ngilishi said. He said the council was finding it difficult to pay salaries because of a narrow revenue base.
He said the council had a workforce of 30, including casual workers and a monthly wage bill of K35 million. Mr Ngilishi said attempts by the council to widen its revenue base through the introduction of by-laws for extra income such as sand, charcoal and animal levies had not yielded desired results.
He said the vastness of the district and lack of the council's comprehensive means to collect the levies had made it difficult for the local authority to generate enough revenue. "We engaged a revenue collection agent but even with that we are not realising enough because even them depend on bicycles to move around," he said.
Mr Ngilishi, who said the only sure source of revenue for the council was the Government, said currently no grant had been received.
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