Workers fight on 22 years later
A private investigator is representing the 155 employees retrenched by the old Germiston City Council in 1993.
Tabo Buzwa, a Kathorus-based private investigator, is representing the 155 employees retrenched by the old Germiston City Council in 1993. He believes the two-decade-old labour dispute can only be resolved with the help of the Ekurhuleni Municipality.
Buzwa, of Buzwa Consulting and Private Investigations, told Kathorus MAIL that he is convinced the answers he needs to resolve his clients’ labour dispute remain in the archives of the Ekurhuleni Metro Municipality’s Human Relations department.
“Of course, everything relating to the employees of the old Germiston Council is now stored in the archives of the new metro municipality”, explained Buzwa, detailing his long links with case.
The private investigator explained that he now wants the matter to be finalised soon, because he says some of the former municipality employees are unwell, old and frail. He pointed out that to date, 15 of the former Germiston City Council have since died. “Several more are in various stages of ill health and are confined to their respective rural homes away from the case, unable to travel to Gauteng for the different hearings that have seen the probe dragging on for the past 23 years.
“What happened to these people when they were retrenched in July 1993 is sad and I hope officials within the Ekurhuleni Metro’s HR department would be able to help us bring this matter to rest,” said Buzwa. He added that many of these former Germiston City Council employees, who at the time were posted at different municipal offices around Katlehong, believe they were short-changed by Germiston City in their retrenchment payout deal.
“We were paid different amounts of between R10 000 and R5 000 per employee depending on our job description and salary scales. We were promised that our pension fund contribution payout would follow as soon as the different amounts have been calculated by the life insurance and investment company involved,” explained 67-year-old Mzinto Mpingana, chairperson of the aggrieved group of the remaining former Germiston Council municipal employees.
Buzwa recalled that the retrenchments took place during the height of the anti-apartheid protest waged by residents in black townships. “At the time, many residents withheld their monthly municipal service payments for water, light and rental payment for the government-issued matchbox houses. As a result, the continued boycotts bankrupted the township municipal administration systems and forced many municipalities in the townships to shut down,” explained the PI.
“We were informed that we would be re-employed again by the new black government after the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. And based on that, we understood the reason for our retrenchment packages not being paid was because we were to be re-employed again the following year, after the elections,” Mpingana recalled.
His claims were confirmed by a former colleague at the City Council, 65-year-old Zola Radebe, who said he started working for the Germiston City Council in 1976 as a garbage collector. But in July 1993, he, together with Mpingana, was among the estimated 316 municipality employees who were marked for retrenchment.
“We all believed what the officials told us, but today, 23 years later, we are still here talking to you about our unpaid benefits,” said Radebe, who lamented the fact that after two decades into the new dispensation, he and his former colleagues were still battling to have their outstanding benefits resolved.
Although Buzwa absolved the current Ekurhuleni Metro authorities of any wrongdoing in the affair, he admitted that he was expecting the authorities to at least re-instate some of the younger ex-employees among the group. “That is why I am still positive about the outcome of our next yet unscheduled meeting with them,” he explained.
He listed that he hopes to have those;
· eligible for employment to be reinstated
· employees to be paid all amounts due to them
· children of deceased employees to benefit
Ekurhuleni Metro coordinator and forensic representative Koos Molebela, read out his forensic findings during the meeting as mandated by Buzwa Consulting and Private Investigations. Molebela will be submitting his report to the Metro and then report to the group at a date to be announced.
