Bulawayo City Council (BCC) is set to recruit 300 more workers to fill in vacant positions that have arisen within the local authority after the government lifted the job freeze which barred council from making new recruitments.
In 2010, the government issued a directive barring institutions from recruiting additional staff as they were incapacitated to pay them.
The ban affected most local authorities who were forced to compromise on service delivery due to staff shortages.
In July 2019, Bulawayo Mayor Councillor Solomon Mguni said the local authority had a shortage of 500 workers and this had affected service delivery across the city.
The local authority then approached the government to seek approval to hire more workers.
After the government approved the request, the local authority has embarked on a staff recruitment exercise to fill some of the critical posts.
Some of the posts include Principal Engineer (water branch), Principal Engineer (roads branch), Principal Town Planner, Principal Land Surveyor, Town Planner and postgraduate traineeships amongst other vacancies.
In an interview with CITE, the Town Clerk Christopher Dube said they are targeting to recruit about 300 vacancies.
“We have more than 300 vacancies to fill but we are not going to take all of them because of the situation,” said TC Dube.
“Yes the government had frozen all posts but we have been given the go-ahead by the government, we wouldn’t have done it without government’s approval that would be illegal,” he said.
Dube said they will prioritise the most critical posts.
