Mayors and councillors in the country’s 257 municipalities will contribute their 4% salary increases to the Covid-19 Solidarity Fund established by President Cyril Ramaphosa for three months.
The SA Local Government Association (Salga) announced that nearly 10000 councillors would be making the contributions following Ramaphosa’s decision to increase their salaries by 4% backdated to July last year. Salga indicated that despite councillors being the least paid public office bearers and with a huge gap between them and their provincial and national counterparts they would contribute their 4% annual increases for April, May and June to the fund.
Annual salaries for full-time mayors and councillors will be between R575000 and over R1.4m while other part time local government representatives will now be paid between R247000 and R787000 a year, depending on their positions.
The association will ask senior managers in municipalities to also pledge their pay hikes of between 2.8% and 4.3% to the fund for a similar period.
Senior managers in local government earning less than R1 million received 4.3% salary increases while those paid less than R1.5m will get 2.8% more on their pay. Mayors and councillors have been encouraged to approach the SA Local Government Bargaining Council to recommend that municipal workers make a similar contribution.
However, the SA Municipal Workers’ Union rejected the move,
saying it would not take part in what it described as a “salary cut
challenge”.
The Public Servants Association also urged its members to report to it if there is any duress or undue pressure placed on them to make contributions or if any unauthorised deductions are made from their salaries, but the government has assured its employees that contributions to the fund are on a voluntary
basis.