Cosatu urges Mchunu to stop terminating contracts

KwaZulu-Natal premier Willies Mchunu. File picture: Motshwari Mofokeng

KwaZulu-Natal premier Willies Mchunu. File picture: Motshwari Mofokeng

Published Jul 30, 2016

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Durban – The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) has urged recently installed KwaZulu-Natal premier Willies Mchunu to suspend the termination of contracts of officials in his department.

Cosatu had learned with shock about the “very devastating move” by Mchunu’s office that it had joined those MECS’ who had started “the carnival of terminating contracts of the staff they found in the departments” when they recently took office, Cosatu provincial secretary Edwin Mkhize said in a statement.

Early this month Cosatu wrote a letter to the African National Congress as the governing party requesting an urgent meeting to engage on the matter, but this did not happen due to the tight schedule of officials building up to the local government elections on August 3. It had always been Cosatu’s view that the matter would be put on hold pending engagements between the affected parties, he said.

“After writing to the ruling party, as Cosatu, we have cautioned about the dangers of factionalising the workplace. We further cautioned about the irresponsible termination of employment of people at the time when the levels of unemployment were escalating as per the latest stats by Statistic South Africa, which were informed by the Labour Survey Study by [the] Employment Commission. We [raised] this hoping that the officials were going to stop what they were doing.

“As a result Cosatu KZN has written to the premier requesting the premier to suspend the decision to terminate contracts of officials and workers in his department pending the engagements between the affected parties.

“We do this as part of our revolutionary duty and responsibility as Cosatu to protect workers and their families who are going to suffer poverty because of this act. We call on the office of the premier to heed our call and save workers,” Mkhize said.

African News Agency (ANA)

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