Civil Servants irked by salary delay.
Business almost came to a halt at Balaka District Council offices on (Monday) when angry civil servants stormed the offices demanding an explanation from the District Commissioner for the May salary delays.
Government according to sources has had to borrow to fund for salaries.
Salaries started flowing into public servants accounts on Monday evening at least 9 days after their official pay date of 27th of every month.
Apart from the May salaries, the disgruntled government workers claim that they had been receiving their previous salaries late than the government official pay day which falls on 27 of each month.
The workers who mostly came from education and health sectors started assembling at the DC’s office as early as 7:30 AM and after they formed a sizable group, they started chanting songs containing their grievances.
However, this did not go down well with council authorities who, through the civil servants’ representatives told them that the conduct was likely to cause commotion as some overzealous people could join them. But this didn’t yield any desired response until after some minutes.
After a meeting with the group’s representatives, the DC Darwin Mngoli together with Director of Health and Social Services (DHSS) Chimwemwe Thambo and District Education Manager (DEM) Ignatius Kameni, addressed the gathering where he attributed the May salary delay to underfunding by the central government.
“It is true that the May salaries have delayed, this is due to underfunding. We noted this on May 26 and on May 30 we received communication that we can proceed processing the vouchers which we submitted the following day.
When we tried to follow up, we were told that there was a technical problem. But today we have been assured that people will start receiving their respective salaries,” said Mngoli.
Speaking later to journalists, Mngoli said in future, they will make sure that there is good coordination among the staff that process the salaries so that the civil servants should no longer receive their salaries late.
However, some officers at the council claimed the salary delay was because of the salary increment arrears for April which eventually made the wage bill shoot overwhelmingly, but the DC never confirmed nor denied this.
