Metro struggling to fill vacancies
Some positions not filled since 2015
The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality is struggling to keep to its three-month turnaround time to fill vacancies even after launching a paperless system.
Some positions have not been filled since 2015.
In October, the city launched an e-recruitment system in the hope of reducing the turnaround time to three months and cutting the vacancies backlog.
The delays in filling vacancies are worsened by staff shortages in the human resources department, with only nine human resource practitioners and two data capturers working in the department.
Acting director for human resource management services Mzi Mangcotywa said the department was still in the process of wading through information to determine how many vacancies exist.
Mangcotywa said some of the vacancies date back to 2015.
“We are convinced this elaborate process will be concluded within a week because we are convinced we have done a lot.”
Mangcotywa said a detailed report with the vacancies would be presented to committee chair Annette Lovemore and acting corporate services boss Nosipho Xhego within the next seven days.Xhego warned the number of vacancies in the municipality and the slow turnaround time for filling them posed a risk for the metro.
She said failure to fill funded vacancies could lead to departments losing the allocated money, particularly during the adjustments budget period.
By the end of April, the human resources department had received 370 recruitment notices from departments.
In her report tabled in the corporate services committee on Thursday, Xhego wrote that most of the delays were from the date of the receipt of the recruitment notice and the closing date of applications to the capturing of applications, shortlisting and, eventually, the interviewing process.
Departments also took their time when notifying the human resources department of any vacancies.
“Each department is allocated an HR practitioner, and each practitioner is expected to have a plan approved by the department on when they intend to shortlist for each position and what date they intend to have interviews,” Xhego said.
“This means that some departments are in no rush to fill these positions.
“Another reason for the delays is disagreement between management and unions.”
Lovemore said a risk workshop to discuss the matter further would be held early in August.
“To accurately and efficiently address this we must have a real handle on where the problems are,” she said.
DA councillor Ondela Kepe proposed that departments that caused delays be held accountable.
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