Electrical department staff on strike

THERE is unrest at the Municipal electrical department as workers have downed tools for what is now the second week.

The cause for this is that workers claim that they are being forced to work under dangerous conditions, as the personal protective equipment they receive annually has still not been issued this year.

According to shop-steward, Celani Mngomezulu, who is also part of the union SAMWU, the ppe is issued in July each year.

“Working conditions should always be favourable to the employee and so far, it seems that our employers do not agree, as we have not been given a reasonable explanation as to why we still have not received our working gear,” said Mr Mngomezulu.

These municipal workers say that they wrote letters to officials requesting that this matter be addressed but to no avail.

“The Municipal Manager said that we were to return our old overalls in order to receive new ones. We do not understand why we need to do this, as even the ones we have now are not enough. Furthermore, we have never been requested to trade our old overalls in for new ones before,” said Mr Mngomezulu.

The workers then demanded a written letter specifying the actual reason why old uniforms had to be returned, but this, too, is said to have been ignored.

According to the director of the Technical Services Department, Vaasen Chetty, 80 staff members are involved in the strike.

“The reason the municipality has not issued uniforms this year is that the ones that were issued last year were of three times better quality and they were informed that they would not be getting any this year,” said Mr Chetty

This municipal department says that they are currently doing all they can to reach an agreement with the disgruntled workers and although this has not had any major impact on things in town, residents will not be receiving any assistance, if they report a fault with their electricity.

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