Ratepayer organisations and councillors in Msunduzi Municipality are outraged about the refuse that has been left to pile up in the streets after a workers’ dispute with the City over wages and working conditions.
By Thursday afternoon though, some parts of the city were being cleaned as services had partially resumed.
“The Mercury” understands that parts of the City were being cleaned by staff members employed in the Expanded Public Works Programme.
While the City claimed that employees are back on duty, some of the workers said they will only return to work after their concerns are resolved.
According to the workers, the strike was caused by the City’s decision to cut their wages by thousands of rand and complaints about poor working conditions.
Affected workers include street sweepers and refuse collectors in the industrial and domestic areas.
“We have stopped working, we are not going back to work until we have been paid our full wages,” said one of the city workers taking part in the strike on Thursday.
“Some of our wages are short by as much as R3 000, that is a lot of money for some of us. Keep in mind that the highest paid employees in our units earn around R13 000, before the deductions on our pay slips,” she said.
Giving the background to the dispute, she said in May, the manager of the unit unilaterally changed shifts.
“People that worked day shifts were put on night shift and those on night were put on day shift. I have been here for close to 10 years and have never worked a night shift.”
She said the workers challenged this and supervisors didn’t want to engage with the workers.
The workers continued to work their normal shifts while waiting to get an explanation.
She said because they did not work the new shift, they were marked as absent and their wages were cut.
“It is not just the wages, it is how we are treated. We have no change rooms, we have to use public toilets to keep our tools and use them as change rooms, we have no tools of trade,” she said.
ACDP councillor Rienus Niemand said they are concerned about the refuse that was left piling up in the streets, adding that the service had partially resumed and was running a day late.
“Some of the grievances (of the workers) included poor working conditions, unavailability of tools of the trade, non-payment of salaries for June and the unfavourable conditions women employees are exposed to when attending to their sanitary needs,” he said.
Anthony Waldhausen of the Msunduzi Association of Residents, Ratepayers and Civics (MARRC) said the strike impacted negatively on residents as refuse hasn’t been picked up for weeks and created a health hazard.
“The non-payment of salaries on Monday and poor working conditions, including a lack of ablution facilities for women employees, sparked a shutdown of the Msunduzi Municipality’s waste management division,” he said.
He said taking the City out of administration was a political ploy. “The municipality hasn’t changed and is still dysfunctional and we have seen no change at all. The CBD is falling apart and is in debt and unable to collect the required revenue for the City.”
The municipality said it had begun to remove the refuse and is working around the clock to deal with the backlog.
The Mercury