A new report reveals that Tshwane metro municipal manager Jason Ngobeni is the best paid civil servant in the country, taking home R3 million annually – more than president Jacob Zuma.
President Zuma has an annual wage of R2.8 million, while ministers in his cabinet earn approximately R2.3 million, and provincial premiers earn R2.1 million, according to the Times Media Group.
“Ngobeni was appointed to the post in 2011‚ and even then‚ was out-earning the president. Officials at the time said that a favourable salary package needed to be offered in a bid to secure him and retain him in the position,” the paper said.
The 2014/15 salaries of almost all of the country’s municipal managers were contained in a response by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) to a parliamentary question by the Democratic Alliance’s Nomsa Marchesi.
It found that municipal manager at Gauteng local municipality Emfuleni, Yunus Chamda, was paid R2.4 million despite reservations about the municipality’s ability to continue as a going concern in its most recent annual report.
Other metro municipal managers salaries range between R1.9-million for Buffalo City and R2.8 million for Ekhuruleni.
The eThekwini and Mangaung municipal managers’ packages are on par at around R2.4 million each while the City of Cape Town municipal manager earns just over R2.2 million.
The Johannesburg municipal manager takes home R2.6 million annually, TMG reported, noting that the R2 million paid job in Nelson Mandela Bay is currently vacant.
It said that salaries for municipal managers in district municipalities vary between R1 million to R1.5 million.
Auditor-general Kimi Makwetu said recently that irregular expenditure among South Africa’s municipalities has more than doubled over the last five years, to R14.75 billion.
Unauthorised expenditure also increased threefold from 2010-11 to R15.32 billion.
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