Johannesburg - The 2400 security guards who have been left unemployed after Passenger Rail Agency SA (Prasa) terminated contracts with their companies across the country, received a lifeline from the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria.
Judge Hans Fabricius issued an urgent order that the security guards may immediately return to their posts and that they must receive a calendar month’s notice before their services could be terminated.
They will continue to receive their salaries until at least the end of December if the Prasa board decided to terminate their contracts at the end of this month.
The order was met by smiles and jubilation from the handful of security guards and security company representatives in court.
Several security companies turned to the urgent court in a bid for Prasa to re-employ the guards until their contracts were finally terminated and they were given a month’s notice as well.
Prasa agreed to give the security companies a month’s notice so that it could redeploy its guards elsewhere. The company had extended the contracts on a month-to-month basis from August as it is in the process of finalising a tender process regarding its security services across the country.
The 2 400 security guards have been working for Prasa across the country for more than three years.
Their understanding was that while Prasa was in the process of securing a new tender for its security services, they may continue their work there on a monthly basis.
According to them Prasa extended their contracts at the end of September and they were told that if need be, it will continue to be extended from month-to-month until the tender process to procure other security guards were finalised. So they remained at their posts for October as they were told via a letter that the tender process was still ongoing.
At the end of October they received a text message from Prasa’s security division, in much the same vein as the letters they previously received in which their contracts were yet again extended for a month (plus another month’s notice to follow).
The group reported to their jobs at the start of November, only to be told that the text message was wrong as only the CEO of Prasa could authorize the extension of their contracts. They were told the same day to vacate the various properties and barred from returning.
Prasa, on the other hand, said the group did receive their final notice at the end of September already, which included a month’s notice. Judge Fabricius was told that the group new an important message such as extending their contracts would not have been done legally via text message. Thus, they should have enquired about it.
Counsel for Prasa said the guards in any event “lived on borrowed time” as they knew since last year their contracts would come to an end in light of the tender process.
It was said that the public protector’s “derailed” report in which she found that a number of contracts concluded between Prasa and the applicants were irregular, was also known since 2015.
Prasa has thus embarked on a fresh procurement process to reflect its changing needs and having regard to the comments made by the public
protector.
Judge Fabricius questioned why Prasa said these guards lived on borrowed time, as the tender process were not yet finalised and many
of these security companies applied for the tender.
During his judgment he remarked that it was quite reasonable for the guards to have assumed that their contract was extended to include November, as the wording of the text message was much the same as the letters they had received prior to this when their contracts were
extended on a monthly basis.
They did not know that the text message was “wrong,” as claimed by Prasa.
Security services at Prasa was meanwhile mostly left unattended to when the guards were ousted from their posts this month. It came to light yesterday that some of Prasa’s property had been vandalized in
their absence.