Do your job well and you have a strike on your hands.
This is the strange situation which led to a strike of about 40% of Tshwane metro bus drivers since Monday.
A source within the bus service, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that with the new system where inspectors board any bus and check on tickets sold, about 40% of the bus drivers found that unacceptable and decided to strike.
The Tshwane has a long history of corruption within its ranks. So much so, that the city manager, Jason Ngobeni, last year ordered a complete forensic investigation on the bus services expenditure and screening of its personnel. One of the measures put in place to combat corruption was putting inspectors on buses to do spot-checking. This had a dramatic effect in the decline of corruption.
The strike follows the fuel crisis a few weeks ago, when the metro did not have fuel to put the buses on the road, which left thousands of commuters stranded.
Francois Bekker, DA councillor for Transport, said that the metro should take a strong line in eradicating all corrupt element in the bus service.
‘‘Commuters are time and again left in the lurch with every bus strike. This is in spite of bus ticket prices which recently became much more expensive. This is not acceptable. We call on decisive political leadership to address the public transport services in Tshwane. You simply cannot threaten residents who use their own transport and introduce price hikes if the transport service you deliver is in shambles” Bekker said.
He said to add insult to injury, the public is complaining about very poor communication regarding the transport services, especially when problems arise.
“One resident is actually accusing the Metro of lying about available transport services when enquiries are made” Bekker said.
Fakka Blignaut, a resident of Faerie Glen said: ‘’There is simply no bus service. The bus service in my suburb for the last six months is atrocious. Sometimes they arrive and sometimes they don’t pitch at all. I have a daughter who goes to University of Pretoria and time and again, at 07:30 she has to phone me to take her to university.”
Investigating the poor service, Blignaut phoned the metro’s bus service, and when he eventually managed to get to a senior official, he said the bus drivers were on strike because there are no tickets which can be given to bus drivers. “There is clearly something very wrong there, considering the fact that people are threatened not to drive by car but use the bus service,’’ Blignaut said.
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