Striking metro employees will be axed, warns mayor
“We have very strong leads on the people who assaulted him and we will be pursuing criminal charges.”
Tshwane metro employees taking part in an ongoing illegal strike will be dismissed, mayor Randall Williams said.
“We are now identifying the workers involved,” he said during a TV interview on Sunday evening.
“As soon as we properly identify them, we will dismiss them.”
He explained that the metro was using photos and videos to identify the workers involved in the illegal strike which started last week Tuesday over a wage dispute.
“They want to present a city that is chaotic so I can agree to a ridiculous salary increase,” Williams said.
Since the strike started, the metro has accumulated a service delivery backlog that led to several residents finding themselves without power for prolonged periods.
ALSO READ: Law enforcement agencies join hands to protect city amid ongoing illegal strike
Williams said the striking employees, who were allegedly affiliated to the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), were creating power outages by, among others, sabotaging substations and stealing cables.
Also on Sunday, MMC for Finance Peter Sutton, through a video posted on social media, said he had visited an employee who was hospitalised after he was “brutally” assaulted by striking employees.
He said the employee was in a serious but stable condition.
“We have very strong leads on the people who assaulted him and we will be pursuing criminal charges. We will make sure justice is served,” Sutton said.
He also mentioned that the metro was working to identify the “criminals” on their system.
“We are working to identify these criminals in our system that were part of these illegal activities and we will get them out of the system,” he said.
“We cannot allow criminals to destabilise this administration, attack our democracy and prevent us from executing our core mandate – providing services to residents,” Sutton said.
In an earlier statement, Williams said these striking workers were forcefully removing their colleagues from their offices and threatening them and Tshwane metro property.
He also encouraged any employee, who was threatened or physically assaulted, to approach the metro’s labour relations unit to assist them with opening criminal cases and ensuring that disciplinary proceedings were enacted.
“We have also identified multiple individuals already over the last few days who we will be taking action against. The city cannot be held ransom by narrow political interests,” Williams said.
Last week, MMC for Community Safety Grandi Theunissen said they established a joint operations centre to restore order and put an end to service delivery disruptions and damage to property and infrastructure.
The joint operations centre consisted of the TMPD, SAPS public order policing unit along with civil society and private security agencies.
Days after the strike broke out, Samwu distanced itself from claims that its members were driving the ongoing strike action in the metro’s seven regions.
“We just want to indicate that our members are not on strike,” Samwu regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane said.
“Anything that happens in the city is attributed to Samwu. Any person who is seen in town marching wearing a red T-shirt or being involved in a particular action are claimed to be Samwu members.”
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