Durban - POLITICAL parties have welcomed the stance taken by the Ugu District municipality to fire more workers this week.
The parties were reacting to the latest tensions between the district municipality and trade unions. In the past three weeks, Ugu has dismissed 70 workers, 42 from Harding and 28 from Park Rynie.
George Henderson, the DA Ugu caucus chairperson, welcomed the dismissals. “For the first time ever, there is consequence management being applied The unions ran rogue. Every time the unions striked, Ugu buckled.”
The municipality said these employees had taken part in an illegal strike. The strike was sparked by the suspension of 14 employees for alleged misconduct last month. Striking workers were also demanding that municipal managers Dhanpalan Naidoo and Paul Watson, the senior managers for water services operations, be removed from their jobs for alleged corruption.
Henderson said it was unfortunately the public who suffered. “When is this going to end?... Everybody has been thrown under the bus and the poor have to suffer,” he said.
Henderson said Ugu would soon be bankrupt.
IFP executive committee member Simphiwe Mthethwa said the municipality needed strong leadership to deal with the problems it was facing. “It is not a pretty situation,” he said.
Mthethwa believed the workers were being manipulated by politicians for political gain and said the IFP had been warning about this for a long time.
Municipal spokesperson France Zama said they were using skeleton staff to run operations at the municipality. He said their biggest challenge was with the power outages that affected the provision of water.
Zama said they expected to effect more dismissals this week, of employees from the south of Ugu, in the Marburg area. He said an ultimatum had been issued to them to return to work or be dismissed.
Last Sunday he told the Daily News the municipality planned to dismiss workers who did not report to work, and 28 workers were dismissed during the week.
To deal with the staff shortage, Zama said they planned to start a recruitment process to replace those who were dismissed.
Intimidation of workers who had not participated in the strike was also hampering service delivery, he said. “More than 30 water tankers are sitting idle as drivers have been intimidated. We are using private contractors who are brave enough to work,” he said.
“We continue to forge ahead regardless of how many stones are thrown at us,” Zama said.
Co-operative Governance Department (Cogta) spokesperson Senzo Mzila said the MEC was concerned with the stability of the municipality. “The department is engaging the municipality on the challenges it is facing and a team of experts is providing support to the municipality.”
SA Municipal Workers’ Union Ugu district chairperson Mthandeni Ngcobo said it was untrue that they had engaged in violence and intimidated workers. He said the non-striking workers had continued with their duties in front of the striking employees. “Everybody has a right to make their own choice,” he said.
Ngcobo said it was untrue they had been “dominating” the municipality.