General workers of the Tlokwe infrastructure division protested and downed tools on Friday, 23 October over non-payment for overtime work.
This issue also affected basic services to the community such as water, sanitation, sewerage, pipe leaks and other essential services.
According to one of the workers who did not want to be named for fear of losing his job, “this month we were not paid for overtime. We were never informed that we will not be getting our money. We only found out when we opened our payslips. Our municipality does not care about its workers. There is a lack of communication between the general workers and the management. Every time we try to engage with them, they are always in Ventersdorp. This shows that the Tlokwe-Ventersdorp merger is already affecting us.”
“This is the first time that the lack of proper management has happened in 20 years. On Friday, we tried to engage with our manager, Benjamin Zungu. He told us that he had called the people who are responsible for our money and said we may be receiving our money next month. That is not good enough,” the worker said.
He continued, “We are working hard and do not have quality time to spend with our families during weekends because we are fixing pipes and toilets in Ikageng. We are doing everything in our power to assist the community. We plead with the community not to blame us for the lack of service because the management is to be blamed. Right now, our debts have not been paid and we are worried about how we are going to feed our families.”
The outstanding amounts range from R4 000 to R5 000, depending on the days worked during the weekend.
The spokesperson of the Tlokwe Municipality, Mr William Maphosa, explained that there had been a technical glitch in capturing the payment for October 2015. This meant that the information could not be captured by the set date and time for a salary run.
“The overtime forms that were not captured and checked on the system before the shut down for the salary run will be paid into the employees’ bank accounts during the first week of November 2015. This arrangement has been communicated to the affected employees,” he said.
Maphosa says this system failure was the first of its kind ever to appear.
“As far as we are aware, there has been no ‘down tools’ and service delivery was not affected in the process.”
“Council regrets the occurrence and will take steps to prevent a similar recurrence in future,” he concluded.
