Durban — Ekurhuleni Municipality has denied claims by the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) that it has benchmarked its employees’ salaries to align with other metros.
Samwu cited Ekurhuleni as an example of a municipality increasing salaries and that the eThekwini Municipality was lagging behind.
However, Ekurhuleni spokesperson Zweli Dlamini denied Samwu’s claims.
“There is nothing like that. We have not done anything of changing the categories,” said Dlamini.
However, he could not say in what category the municipality’s workers’ salaries were.
Samwu general secretary Dumisani Magagula said the eThekwini Municipality adopted a new grading system 10 years ago, which moved the salary scale of certain employees to curve 10 while leaving others in curve 8.
Magagula claimed that Ekurhuleni had already implemented the new grading system.
“If you look at their salaries compared to eThekwini, eThekwini pays much less,” he said.
KwaZulu-Natal South African Local Government Association chairperson Thami Ntuli said the issue of benchmarking salaries of municipalities was still under discussion.
“Whoever informed workers that there are municipalities who had gone ahead to implement this should be investigated,” said Ntuli.
Sunday Tribune