Still a long way for City of Mbombela
There is no deadline as to when all the City's necessary vacancies will be filled, but as soon as resources are made available, they will be filled, says municipal spokesperson Joseph Ngala
MBOMBELA – The City of Mbombela Local Municipality (CMLM) has blamed the shortage of staff in key departments on the amalgamation last August.
Spokesman Joseph Ngala, this week confirmed that the City of Mbombela was not running at full capacity in many key departments, including the traffic and fire departments.
Lowvelder reported three weeks ago that the municipality needed 492 traffic officers to run at full capacity. CMLM, which includes Mbombela, Barberton, White River and Hazyview, currently has only 33 traffic officers. A further 22 officers will be employed at the end of the year.
Ngala said this was a result of the amalgamation of the Mbombela and Umjindi municipalities after last year’s elections.
“No municipality can ever have enough traffic officers,” he said. “That is why we established the Mpumalanga Traffic Training College in Bushbuckridge to build up the numbers, which for us is a start.”
According to him, the municipality has opened a one-year traineeship for 50 traffic candidates, which will start next year. Applications for the traineeship close on Tuesday October 31.
“We are making inroads with limited resources because the amalgamated municipalities had their own existing challenges.” Ngala went on to say the municipality is currently finalising a plan to deal with key positions that need to be filled.
These include technical staff such as engineers, process controllers and managers of various departments.
“This is an ongoing process. We cannot put a deadline as to when the positions will be filled.” He went on to say, “The positions will be filled when the resources are available”.
