City services take knock as strike drags on
“The utterances by the mayor have not sat well with workers who have now gone for months without a salary increase.”
Many Tshwane services have taken a knock as the metro and striking South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) workers cannot agree on salary negotiations.
The Tshwane bus operations have been interrupted for many residents, along with services such as electricity, water and sanitation teams, licensing, public cleaning and waste collection, especially around the CBD and Centurion.
Tshwane metro spokesperson Selby Bokaba said, some clinics were also likely to be affected as well, “but disruptions would be minimal”.
@CityTshwane Don’t mess with us …@pretorianews @SABCNews @eNCA pic.twitter.com/AVBFtXB9Tp
— SAMWU Greater Tshwane (@SAMWU_CoT_METRO) October 22, 2021
@tshwane_mayor your employees are waiting for you …
Come and address them !!!@Newzroom405 @SABCNews @pretorianews @SundayTimesZA @Radio702 Tshwane has come to stand still !!! pic.twitter.com/siUF3MWp7K— SAMWU Greater Tshwane (@SAMWU_CoT_METRO) October 22, 2021
The strike has also led to prolonged electricity outages because of intimidation of teams and sabotage, according to utilities MMC Phillip Nel.
“Tshwane’s electricity network is currently taking a serious strain because of load-shedding.
“Our network was not designed with load-shedding in mind. It damages our systems; however, it is being made significantly worse by strike actions.”
Nel said the downing of tools by striking municipal employees has a severe effect on the time to restore outages.
“While the illegal strike has limited the workforce available to respond to outages across the city, region 4 in the city was particularly badly affected.
“Our teams are experiencing difficulties in conducting their duties as they are facing intimidation, preventing them from accessing materials and being forcibly removed from offices.”
He said the metro was working with security agencies to ensure support to staff.
“The mayor has indicated this is an illegal strike. It is driven by politics in an attempt to sabotage service delivery before the election.
“Most officials want to work and do their duties, but they are being prevented from doing so.”
Samwu Tshwane regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane said the union was angered by mayor Randall Williams’ claims that unions were “politicised”.
“The utterances by the mayor have not sat well with workers who have now gone for months without a salary increase. Instead of attending to the legitimate demands of workers, the mayor has been quoted as saying that workers are fighting a political battle.
“Ours is not a political battle but a battle for the implementation of salary and wage increases as agreed upon.”
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Tladinyane said the local government elections had no bearing on “this fight”.
The Tshwane mayor has tried to bill the Samwu for allegedly causing costs incurred as a result of the ongoing unlawful strike.
“The metro will issue the bill against Samwu for the wasteful costs incurred as a result of this unlawful strike,” he said.
This also comes after the metro secured an interdict, last week, against the unlawful Samwu strike action.
Williams said despite this order, Samwu had engaged in continued disruption of work and subsequent interruption of service delivery.
“The metro has properly constituted labour structures where decisions on any labour issues can be deliberated on.
“These structures remain open and should be used optimally to resolve issues instead of resorting to chaos.”
Williams dubbed the strike actions as “political acts meant to disrupt the work of DA-led Tshwane metro in the run-up to elections”.
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