Maputo, 23 Jun (AIM) – The Mozambican Minister of State Administration, Ana Comoana, told reporters on Friday that it is the responsibility of the municipalities to fit their work force into the new Single Wage Table (TSU) for the public administration, and to correct any irregularities.
Comoana was answering questions about the strike by workers of Maputo Municipal Council which began on Monday. The workers are demanding that they be paid in line with the TSU. This would almost double the wages of the lowest paid municipal workers.
The Council says that paying TSU wages would cost an extra 30 million meticais (about 470,000 US dollars) a month, which it cannot afford, particular as it is already deeply in debt.
Comoane pointed out that the responsibility for this crisis lay with the municipality, and not with the central government. Municipal Councils are decentralized bodies, and so their management does not depend on the government.
“The municipalities are autonomous”, she said. “That means that the municipality is independent, with administrative and financial autonomy”.
An example of that autonomy, Comoana added, was that the central municipality of Beira paid its workers the New Year Bonus, known as “the 13th month” (because it is equivalent to an extra month’s wages) even though the central government had announced it would not be paying the bonus to workers of the public administration.
In the case of Maputo, Comoana said her Ministry cannot interfere particularly since the municipality claims it is trying to slot its workforce into the national human resource management system.
“If, for any reason, a municipality is not prepared to migrate to the national system, the first effort must be to establish conditions for this, going into a platform whose management has its own norms”, she added.
The National Association of Municipalities (ANAMM) has backed the Maputo workers, saying they have every right to be paid in line with the TSU.
The ANAMM secretary-general, Carlos Mucapera, cited by the independent television station STV, said there is no doubt that the municipal workers are public servants, and so the TSU applies to them. The question was how to make it viable to include them in the TSU.
Mucapera added that some municipalities collect enough revenue to reduce their dependence on the central government. Prominent among them is the southern municipality of Matola which, in terms of population, is the largest city in the country.
The Matola councilor of finance, Ana Maria Alves, says that, with an annual budget of about 200 million meticais, it would be able to pay its staff on the basis of the TSU.
Matola Council is placing all its staff in the national human resource management system, she said, and when this is done, it will start paying them TSU wages.
(AIM)
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