Thursday, 20 June 2013 07:27

The Times reports that the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) and the SA Municipal Workers' Union (Samwu) walked out of negotiations with the SA Local Government Association (Salga) on Wednesday.  Salga CEO Xolile George said that to his surprise the unions decided to abandon the negotiations “without justifiable reasons”.  He explained that there was a long-standing main agreement created in 2000, and “the objective was to review the agreement and see what works and doesn't work, what needs to be changed and what can remain."  Salga's municipal executive director Rio Nolutshungo said the unions were demanding that certain benefit agreements be made before the talks proceed.  Imatu said it was growing increasingly frustrated with Salga as it had been “dragging its heels every step of the way, resulting in very slow progress and time wastage.”  Samwu claimed that Salga had been negotiating in bad faith and that deadlock had come about because it did not want to improve conditions for workers.

• Read this report at Times Live

Thursday, 20 June 2013 04:53

A senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Johan Burger, has warned that local policing will suffer if a proposal to form a single police force is approved and becomes law, Beeld reported on Wednesday.  A green paper on policing, which has recently been published, recommends that legislation be amended to provide for a single police force.  "If we have one police service, it will be chaotic.  You will overload the police with responsibilities and local policing will suffer.  National priorities will always override local priorities and it'll be a miserable situation," Burger claimed.  Democratic Alliance spokeswoman Dianne Kohler-Barnard said the DA was opposed to a single police service.

• Read this report at The Citizen