Former EPWP employees feel betrayed by Govan Mbeki Municipality
The acting head of communications, Donald Green, said the municipality will not discuss internal matters with a third party. However, the decision to terminate the contracts of these employees was communicated to the employees well in advance.
Former Extended Public Works Programme employees feel betrayed by the Govan Mbeki Municipality.
They allegedly had agreements with the municipal manager Elliot Maseko to be given permanent employment.
These former EPWP employees claim that they’ve been working in the programme for the past six years and in 2022 they met Maseko and they agreed with him that they will be insourced and will be given first preference when there are vacancies.
They also claim that they were only told that their contracts ended without being given a written notice for them to submit to their creditors.
They say the municipality made their lives difficult because they have a lot of debt and no income. They also allege they were replaced with certain officials’ relatives from outside the municipality’s jurisdiction.
“We are the ones that do a lot of service delivery work compared to the municipality’s employees. We have served this municipality very well and that’s how they thank us.
“We were deployed in all the departments doing work for them and their employees.
“They call themselves a city of excellence but we did the hard work to repair sewer spillages and other service delivery issues, risking our lives. But today we mean nothing to them.
“They have brought people from outside our municipality’s jurisdiction to replace us but they claim the programme is for locals,” said a former EPWP employee.
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The acting head of communications, Donald Green, said the municipality will not discuss internal matters with a third party. However, the decision to terminate the contracts of these employees was communicated to the employees well in advance.
Green said the programme is obliged to give as many residents as possible an employment opportunity, thereby easing financial constraints on the many destitute families in their communities.
“The EPWP programme is designed to be a short-term programme to give recipients work experience, training and an income so that workers stand a much better chance of finding permanent employment – not only in the municipality but in the private sector too.
“However, due to the high unemployment rate, many have grown dependent on the programme, having been employed as an EPWP worker for many years,” said Green.
