The Kouga Municipality has announced that a strike is taking place at the moment at its Jeffreys Bay offices.
It says the Municipal offices have been closed to ensure the safety of staff and the public.
Kouga Local Municipality Communications Officer Mfendu Sobelo said the SA Municipal Worker's Union has called on its members to strike on Monday.
Their issues revolve around a number of Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) workers whose temporary contracts ended on 28 February and were not renewed.
Kouga Executive Mayor Elza Van Lingen says in a statement that as a municipality, they believe they acted lawfully in ending the contracts.
She says the workers and Council were timeously informed on the decision.
Van Lingen says unfortunately, some of the strikers broke the two access control gates at the Municipality; they broke windows, and also damaged cars.
She said the Municipality would be laying charges in this regard.
Samwu spokesperson, Clifton Booysen, told Algoa FM News that they're fighting for the EPWP contract to be renewed is because those workers "were not doing EPWP projects but they were doing municipal work where there are vacancies where people had either passed away or people had retired or had been dismissed."
"We feel as Samwu that these workers were exploited all these and years and now all of a sudden when the DA took over they now decided to take out these people and put their own 48 people and all of them are from the DA or members of the DA," said Booysen.
Booysen also said that they want people who are in acting positions at the municipality to be appointed permanently.
He also claimed that police were present at the Municipality building this morning where a meeting between the union and the Municipality was scheduled.
