The New Age reports that, while workers in the Mangaung metro continue with a strike to demand a salary adjustment, the city has had to make provision for services to be paid in by residents.
Since the strike started two weeks ago, most services have not been paid for as residents have struggled to access the Bram Fischer building and other municipal buildings around the metro.
City spokesperson Qondile Khedama said city management was ensuring that all essential services were not severely interrupted. “The management and leadership of the city continues to engage with employees’ representatives in seeking an amicable solution to the dispute. We have developed a plan that would create an environment that would allow unhindered service delivery and payment of services,” Khedama said.
He said they had also realised people who wanted to pay for their services were struggling as they were unable to access some of the municipal offices. Residents and businesses who wanted to pay rates and taxes or purchase water or electricity services were advised to do so at various third party points.
Workers in Mangaung are demanding salary adjustments in line with the status of the city as a metropolitan municipality. Mangaung became a metro in 2011. Workers also want better working conditions.
Among other demands, workers want the employer to reinstate the contracts of temporary workers that were terminated earlier this year. More than 120 contracts were terminated. Workers said they wanted all the contracts of workers who were in the system for more than three months to be absorbed into the system.
Workers marched to City Hall saying they wanted councillors and MMCs to cease the daily political interference in the administration of the municipality.
Trouble had been brewing in the municipality since February when workers demanded their full pay for overtime they had worked. They also demanded that the municipality do away with outsourcing and the privatisation of municipal services in departments such as finance, water and the sanitation section.
This report by Kamogelo Seekoei is on page 8 of The New Age of 7 June 2017
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