Pretoria - The situation has remained volatile in the City of Tshwane with striking municipal workers allegedly using violence and intimidation to demand a 3.5% and 5.4% salary increase in spite of city management warnings that they could lose their jobs.
Scores of public servants affiliated to the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) downed tools last week and took to the streets in protest over various issues, chief among them the non-payment of salary increases.
The strike, which has been deemed illegal and unprotected by the municipality, disrupted delivery in the metro while denying patients life-saving health care after some facilities were forced to close.
In spite of ity municipal manager Johann Mettler obtaining an interdict against the strike this week, the workers continued with the action prompting threats from the city management that they would be identifying those who had taken part, and they could face dismissal.
Mettler, flanked by mayor Cilliers Brink in a video on Tuesday, gave an ultimatum to strikers that they should go back to work or face dismissal.
“Last week I issued ultimatums to employees who had engaged in the unprotected strike to cease and return to work immediately; subsequently I approached the Labour Court on an urgent basis interdicting the strike and the court ruled in my favour and declared the strike illegal and unprotected.
“All my efforts to end the strike were disregarded and the continuous strike action is in contempt of the court interdict,” Mettler said.
Mettler said that he had released non-essential workers to work from home for their safety while calling for the essential municipal workers to report any intimidation.
Brink described the situation as an assault on the metro and called on residents to understand why there was disruption to services.
Brink said: “The city is under assault by unprotected strike action with the use of violence and intimidation.
“We are seeing the disruption of services, the delay in attending to water and electricity outages. Waste collection is likely to be affected and our most vulnerable attending clinics are being targeted and personnel are being chased out and clinics are being closed.”
Brink accused the workers of trying to force management to agree to the salary increases with violence and intimidation.
He insisted the municipality could not afford salary increases. “We will be looking at mitigation. But there will be disruption and residents must know what is at stake. What we are fighting for is the future of the city and to secure the jobs of officials and to make sure we have a future in this city,” he said.
The City’s MMC of health, Rina Marx, confirmed that the FF Ribeiro, Folang, Rosslyn, Karenpark, Lyttelton and Hercules clinics were forced to close due to the strike action.
“I want to make it clear to employees who have embarked on this unprotected strike that you are all endangering the lives of innocent patients who need critical medical services.
“Patients are being denied access to primary health care services and medication …” she said in a voice note this week.
On Tuesday morning, a municipal worker known to this publication but whose name has been withheld to protect him, was apparently attacked at around 9am.
It is understood that the worker from the Water Distribution sub-section was on his way to refuel a city’s plumber's truck at Belle Ombre and collect his team at the Corner of Du Toit and Dr Savage Street Pretoria Central when he was attacked by five men.
The source said: “Immediately after parking his truck he suddenly noticed about five men approaching him and opened his truck’s door and asked him why he was working, but (he) managed to flee after he was assaulted.”
Pretoria News