Francesca Villette
SIX city workers were injured while others were threatened, intimidated and even followed home when they tried to collect portable toilets in the Kanana informal settlement for cleaning, a Bellville magistrate has been told.
“One vehicle was burnt and four trailers were vandalised,” Lawrence Grootboom, operations manager at the City of Cape Town’s department of water and sanitation, said yesterday. “Because of that, workers were afraid to go into the area.”
Grootboom was testifying at the trial of Ses’Khona People’s Rights Movement leaders Andile Lili and Loyiso Nkohla and seven others on charges of contravening the Civil Aviation Act. They are alleged to have dumped human faeces at the entrance to Cape Town International Airport’s departure terminal on June 25 last year.
Grootboom said the city had taken over responsibility on April 6 last year for cleaning some of the 605 toilets in the Barcelona informal settlement, which included Kanana, when a number of contractor Sannicare’s employees stopped work in a wage dispute.
However, until the end of May last year, city workers could not enter the area because of threats.
On April 25, six of them were attacked by residents.
“One worker was followed home after work.”
Thomas Potgieter, head of the city’s technical operations centre, testified that from April to August 2013, no complaints had been received from residents in the Barcelona area about the servicing of portable toilets. Potgieter said his department received about 40 000 complaints a month. Field workers responded to about 18 000 of these.
The trial has been postponed to October 8.