City of Cape Town struggling to fill 3 000 vacancies due to scarce skills
By Marvin Charles 
Feb 5, 2020
According to the City’s financial performance report, the actual expenditure on salary-related costs amounted to R411 million, compared to the year-to-date budgeted provision of R432m.
The under expenditure is mainly due to the turnaround time in filling vacancies and the impact of the process.
In its financial monitoring report, the City’s finance directorate reported 175 vacancies in various stages of the recruitment and selection process; 82 positions were filled and 33 terminations processed since the beginning of the financial year.
Mayco member for corporate services Sharon Cottle said: “The City is fully committed to managing sustainable staffing levels necessary to ensure service delivery and, to this end, the vacancy rate is a key performance indicator both in the service delivery budget delivery plan as well as the executive director’s performance scorecard.
“Further, the City has implemented a recruitment and selection turnaround strategy comprising a number of staffing solutions and interventions with the intention of reducing the vacancy rate and improving the turnaround time.”
Cottle said the key challenges in addressing the vacancy rate is in the areas of scarce and critical skills, where a targeted attraction strategy is required.
The current vacancy rate, inclusive of contracts which concluded during last month, as well as 1 820 new positions which have been created, is 3 237.
This represents a 9.7% vacancy rate against a target of 12.22%.
Read the follow-up article here: "See the vacancies of 'scarce and critical skills' the City of Cape Town is battling to fill"
@MarvinCharles17Cape Argus