The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) has promised a full-blown strike if local government authorities fail to respond positively to their demands within seven days. Samwu went on strike on Friday demanding among others, an end to outsourcing of jobs in the Newcastle municipality and the release of a forensic audit report on the loss of R10.5m. The union’s regional secretary for Midlands, Sfiso Khumalo, said the Local Labour Forum (LLF) was seeking to resolve this and other forensic investigation reports. “Two shop stewards, Nkosingiphile Mpanza and Thamsanqa Mncube from the roads and storm water division were recently suspended when they were mandated by Samwu members to voice their grievances to the municipality,” Khumalo said. He said the shop stewards were executing the mandate given to them by union members and were not acting in their personal capacities. The union handed a list of demands to mayor Afzul Rehman, municipal manager Kebone Masange and the KZN MEC for cooperative governance and traditional affairs Nomusa Dube, to order the release of the forensic investigation. Khumalo said: “We are aggrieved by the unprocedural process followed in suspending our shop stewards.” Samwu also wants Dube to end councillors’ alleged interference in recruitment processes. “We have noted the never-ending unprocedural outsourcing of services in our municipality and takeover of our functions by private companies. We have noted that outsourcing threatens our jobs and benefits only a few at the expense of many.”“We have further noted the extreme and inhumane conditions our people go through working under private companies,” the union added. The memorandum called for a “ban on the system of tenders, lifestyle audits on all senior officials involved in tender processes, and that services be provided in-house to achieve decent job placements, following the development of a new organisational structure”. “We have witnessed an influx of external employees being appointed in the new structure, whilst internal staff remain unplaced in the old structure and we construe this as a ploy to render internal candidates redundant, so a moratorium must be placed on recruitment until placement of internal staff is concluded,” the union said. It called for an investigation into staff appointments, stating: “The qualifications of staff should be audited, the municipality be compelled and monitored to comply with the Municipal Systems Act and its recruitment policy in all recruitment processes”. Another complaint was about the alleged flouting of the Municipal Systems Act in appointing heads of departments, and senior executive director (SEDs). “We have seen SEDs remain in the employ of the municipality even after their contracts have expired. We believe SEDs aren’t supposed to act beyond six months,” the memorandum said. Samwu wants the MEC to be involved in the appointment of SEDs in future, to ensure transparency and fairness. Newcastle mayor Rehman, who accepted the memorandum, said Samwu members were major contributors to the municipality. “We scooped awards through your hard work and dedication,” he said, adding that his door was always open to workers: “I want the people to come so that they will tell me about their dissatisfaction,” Rehman said. Department of cooperative governance representative Tosh Makhathini, who received the memorandum on behalf of MEC Dube, said he would forward it to her.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 03:35:06 +0000
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