Wanted: 700 artisans, engineers to fix city

THE Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality needs at least 700 more engineers and artisans to fix leaking taps, burst pipes, blocked drains and do other major infrastructure work around the city.

Filling the vacant posts could save ratepayers millions of rands now being spent on private companies doing some of the city's infrastructure work.

The metro has for the past 10 years suffered a massive brain drain and has battled to recruit enough skilled professionals to fulfil the city's vast technical services needs. This has occurred, partly because it has a dire shortage of data capturers to process thousands of job applications.

Councillors heard this week that in some cases the city only had two data capturers processing about 8000 job applications, thus delaying the recruitment process by up to two years.

This means the metro ends up losing out on potentially good technicians who accept job offers elsewhere.

Furthermore, the metro has at times diverted funds meant to hire technicians to other functions.

For example, in July last year the city used the budget for hiring technicians to permanently hire law enforcement officers – a decision taken by councillors after much political pressure from workers.

While the city is in the process of hunting for more technicians, bagging skilled professionals might be challenging.

Some engineers claim they are put off by the politically volatile stand-off between the metro and small contractors who allegedly threaten staff on building sites, demanding a bigger share of the city's tenders. - Rochelle de Kock