WORKERS at Harare City Council’s traffic section have challenged the local authority’s recent decision to endow parking marshals working for City Parking with the right to clamp illegally parked vehicles, saying the move would render them jobless.
BY MOSES MATENGA STAFF REPORTER
According to council minutes, the decision was proposed by the business committee last December and approved during a full council meeting last week.
City Parking, a subsidiary of Harare City Council, was created last year to run the municipality’s parking business while waiting for finalisation of the dispute between Harare and Easihold (Pvt) Limited of South Africa, which used to manage the vehicle parking business through Easipark.
The workers have since petitioned council’s human capital director Cainos Chimombe and the Harare Municipal Workers’ Union demanding that the decision be reversed. Part of the letter reads: “Our job security is no longer guaranteed. What is going to be our fate as traffic enforcement division if part of our duties, in this case clamping, are delegated to a private entity?
“Implementation of such is a violation of the Municipal Traffic Enforcement Act, Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act and the Urban Councils Act. City Parking marshals are neither governed by these statutes nor the City of Harare code of conduct, hence it’s unprocedural if we are to work together,” the workers said. They further argued that a council resolution could not supersede an Act of Parliament.
They added: “Instead, the traffic enforcement division should be capitalised with human personnel to effectively carry out its mandate. Issuing of tickets by traffic enforcement officers to vehicles they would have not clamped themselves raises legal repercussions.
“The feasibility of empowering the City Parking (Pvt) Ltd marshals to clamp vehicles was not looked into, neither were there consultations made to the affected traffic division employees as enshrined in the Labour Relations Act (28:01) Amendment Number 17 of 2002 Section 25A (5) and 6 respectively”.
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They also questioned why almost all council cash cows were being privatised and why council was taking a back seat while assigning all cash collection businesses to private companies.
The traffic enforcement section is mandated to, among other things, clear roads and ensure free flow of traffic in the central business district and guards against illegal parking of heavy vehicles in the suburban areas.
