DURBAN - SENIOR managers in eThekwini Municipality should face disciplinary action over their failure to reduce the city’s annual overtime bill.
This is the view of opposition party councillors who said they did not believe that city officials were doing enough to curb overtime spending amounting to more than R1 billion, calling for them to be held individually responsible.
This after the municipality claimed it was making progress in containing its ballooning overtime bill, when it was responding to concerns raised by the audit committee.
A few weeks ago, the committee tabled a report on the state of the municipality, flagging the overtime expenditure as a concern.
The municipality responded to the committee’s report during an executive committee meeting last week.
It said that over the past three financial years, overtime expenditure had been declining. In the 20202021 financial year, the city incurred R1.073bn in overtime expenditure, the lowest over the past three financial years.
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said the city manager should charge officials who were failing to contain the spending.
“How many years have they been saying that they are trying to contain this, which means they are failing. The city manager should charge these officials. If you have a municipality that continuously accumulates overtime, down the line the municipality will have no money,” said Nkosi.
DA councillor Thabani Mthethwa accused the officials of trying to save face.
“They (municipality) said there was a task team in place to manage this. Overtime is a month-to-month expenditure, yet they have been trying to contain it for years. Their statements are about saving face. Someone approves this overtime.
“This is never going to stop until all the DCMs (deputy city managers) and unit heads are held accountable for it and face disciplinary action,” he said.
In its report, the audit committee had warned about overtime and stressed that overtime management should be part of the performance contract for senior managers.
“The audit committee expressed concern that there were still no measures to reduce overtime expenditure, despite the fact that the matter has been reported a number of times.
“Management was urged to implement control measures to curb overtime for the purpose of avoiding similar findings in the next financial years. Accordingly, the audit committee recommended that the city should consider including some aspects of overtime management as part of the deputy city managers’ performance contracts,” said the report.
In its response, the municipality said there had been progress over the years.
“Compliance measures are in place. An overtime compliance and reduction team comprising cluster representatives, as well as representatives from the top 10 unit spenders, meet on a monthly basis to discuss overtime spend and to look at means to achieve compliance while not affecting service delivery,” it said.
It added that progress had been seen whereby the spend for the 2020/21 was R1.073bn, as compared with the previous year which was R1.3bn, and 2018/2019 which was R1.2bn.
“This shows reduction, but much is still required for us to ensure that budgets are not overspent and that we comply with legislation,” it said.
Among the measures it was exploring, said the city, was a shift system in some units that would suit operations and reduce overtime expenditure.
The municipality was also developing an overtime scheduling system that would assist line managers with pre-and post-overtime approvals.
THE MERCURY