Attempts to prevent this by both management and the leadership of the union failed and a wild cat strike followed by large scale intimidation and damage to public and private property took place. Later during the morning some of my senior directors were threatened and even my office windows broken.
Certain members then also continued to open fire hydrants and damage kiosks, affecting large areas water and or electricity supply. I will not comment on the causes to these actions now as these will be argued at a later stage and at a different forum.
The municipality is putting plans in place to retain capacity to address service delivery issues. Emergency arrangements will be applicable over the weekends and our ability to attend to backlogs in waste removal and sanitation overflows especially may be very limited. We will try to attend to issues of an emergency nature and in next week may be able to place more full service arrangements in place. The indications we received is that the strike will not be concluded soon.
To protect our assets we are in the process of obtaining an interdict against unlawful actions.
I need to urge all of you to conserve water and to be aware that we cannot attended to non emergency issues at this stage. A full emergency plan will be made available as soon as we have it finalised.
On behalf of our Executive mayor, myself and the directors I need to apologise for this unfortunate situation and assure you that we will do our best with the assistance of the provincial leadership to resolve it and move the municipality to a point of normality as soon as possible.
Footage of municipal workers striking
Footage of vandalism that occurred earlier today at the Licencing department
