Durban - Staff in the Durban Solid Waste (DSW) unit have embarked on an illegal go-slow due to the entity’s overtime budget being slashed by 50%.
The city issued an alert to eThekwini residents yesterday that waste collection services in some areas and street-sweeping services in the municipality were being affected by the go-slow.
The reduction of overtime was implemented on Monday, the city said.
The city passed a resolution in June that required that all units cut their spending on overtime by 50%, and use this amount to fill vacancies instead.
DSW and metro police are among the units that are spending exorbitantly on overtime, city records have shown.
The units have in the past justified their overtime spend pointing out that they were short-staffed and the nature of their work was unpredictable.
Head of DSW Raymond Rampersad said the go-slow could involve 1 400 workers in the sweeping and collection unit. However, it could not be established yesterday how many workers were involved, and which areas were affected.
“The overtime budget before was R110 million, but the previous year we spent R146m on overtime. After the council took a decision to cut overtime by 50% across all units in favour of employing more people, my overtime budget was cut from R110m to R55m.
“We are now only allowing overtime on the critical unit that is sweeping and collection, my administration staff are not working overtime any more,” Rampersad said.
He said the unit had several vacancies and the overtime cut may not lead to enough savings to employ the number of staff needed.
“We accumulate large amounts of overtime because of the large areas that we have to cover, the events (social events) and the informal settlements that we have to service.”
He said they would take steps against staff who were on the go-slow.
“We have decided that if the work-stock is not done during the day, we will be docking salaries of those employees.”
DA councillor Mzamo Billy urged the municipality to remain resolute and not turn back on the decision to curb the spending on overtime.
“The DA in eThekwini notes with concern the ongoing illegal strike by some DSW employees due to the 50% overtime cut that was agreed on by council, and has been implemented as from August 1, 2022,” Billy said.
“This go-slow continues to impact on the collection of waste and street-sweeping services around the city.”
He pointed out that by the end of June 2022, DSW had anticipated spending of more than R150m on overtime.
“The DA have fought hard to bring an end to paying millions of rand on overtime without getting meaningful value for it, as this is the result of a self-created crisis which includes an ageing fleet, protest and strike actions resulting in overtime to clear the backlog, and dodgy private contractors failing to fulfil their obligations, which then require DSW employees to complete their task,” he said.
“Instead of ensuring that the city is clean, the overtime system seeks to foster a flawed incentive structure which is clearly bloating the cost of keeping the city clean,” said Billy.
Xolani Dube, of the SA Municipal Workers’ Union, said the union’s eThekwini region was not aware of any of its members engaged in a go-slow.