Contractors at Working for Water, an organisation that helps root out alien vegetation clogging the country’s waterways, have been left with their futures hanging in the balance after being told they may have to re-apply for their jobs, while others will have their contracts terminated.
“We were given no reason or notice,” said contract worker Lee Smith.
He said they had had a meeting last Monday where they were told that 32 contractor positions were available in the Table Mountain National Park. Advertisements had been posted in and around the Cape Cluster.
According to the department of environmental affairs, all contractor positions should be advertised annually. Current contractors must re-apply for their positions along with the public candidate pool.
Zolile Nqayi, the director of communications for the department of environmental affairs, confirmed that all South African National Park Natural Resource Management projects, such as Working for Water, are publicly advertised annually and mandate contractors to re-apply.
He said it was a national process and the number of available positions depended on the budget.
“It has always been this way,” Nqayi said.
However, Smith disagreed, saying that in the past five years of working on the project, he had never had to re-apply. Others, he said, had held their positions for more than 10 years.
Smith said he and other Working for Water contract workers had never heard about the national requirement to re-apply for positions annually.
A contractor based in Worcester, Nonopi Damane, said there was a meeting held on March 31 with the department.
“There was no mention of re-applying,” she said. “They said we would all remain 100 percent and renew our contracts.”
At last Monday’s meeting, contractors were allegedly told that the job advertisements would go up the following day, which also served as the deadline for applications. When the contractors challenged this, they told the Cape Argus they would then be given 14 days to submit their applications.
“That’s if we choose to re-apply,” Smith said.
“But if we re-apply, we condone nearly 40 of our colleagues getting fired.”
“And don’t forget their workers,” added fellow contractor Colin Lagula. “Each contractor has at least 10 workers, sometimes as many as 15.
“That’s 400 people losing jobs.”
Cape Argus