While the Steve Tshwete local municipality in Mpumalanga says it will start the process of replacing 500 employees it dismissed, angry workers are preparing for a total shutdown of the main town of Middelburg tomorrow.
On Thursday, the municipality fired 500 workers who had embarked on an unprotected strike after efforts to get them back to work did not yield results. The workers had been on the unprotected strike since September 21.
In the group are plumbers, mechanics, electricians and fitters.
Their gripe was that the municipality was hiring contractors to do work which the council had the capacity to perform. The contractors were linked to officials in the municipality, workers claimed.
Furthermore, workers wanted the municipality to be graded higher, which would improve their salaries. The strike resulted in the disruption of municipal services and damage to infrastructure. The striking workers also did not allow contractors to operate.
Municipal manager Bheki Khenisa said the town was preparing to provide services without the expelled workers.
“We’ve got service providers that we’ve been using as and when we need them... These contractors will help us in the water and electricity service. Waste removal is an easy process, you just need a driver of the truck and people to throw the garbage in the truck,” Khenisa said.
“We also have an expanded public works programme that we use on a temporary basis. We are going to utilise them in the meantime… From next week [this week] we must start advertising positions. The whole of December we will be doing the recruitment process. By January things should start to get to normal.”
The municipality said it had tried to include the provincial co-operative governance and traditional affairs department, the SA Municipal Workers Union, the SA Local Government Association and the premier, Refilwe Mtsweni-Tsipane in efforts to get the workers back to work but these efforts had all failed.
However, Kgosi Makwati, a spokesperson for the expelled workers, said no contractor would be allowed to work this week.
“We have stopped all the contractors from working since Thursday. We are not ashamed to say that. We are preparing for a total shutdown of the town on Tuesday. We are meeting community organisations to prepare for that action,” he said.
“We are not going to destroy municipal infrastructure. We will just stop the contractors from working. We will stop them until we get the grading. There is no work that will take place. This will be solved politically.”
The municipality, regarded as one of the best-run in the country, has been left hung after the local government elections, paving the way for a coalition to run it for the first time in its history.
Makwati said discussions had already taken place with political parties that could form the majority in the new council for them to reverse the decision and reinstate workers.
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