Shutterstock
by: Ciaran Ryan
The Democratic Municipal and Allied Workers Union of South Africa (Demawusa) last week attached assets belonging to the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality over an outstanding R8.8 million in pay owed to 36 workers.
The outstanding payment dates back to 2015 for the workers who were insourced immediately after the Labour Relations Act amendments, which require temporary workers to be permanently placed after three months.
The assets attached include a fleet of trucks as well as other vehicles. The loss of these vehicles would be devastating for the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality and its already crippled service delivery.
The 36 workers were employed in a call centre operated by the municipality but had been short-paid since 2015, according to Demawusa coordinator, Siphiwo Ndunyana. “Most of these workers started as early as 2009 but were deemed to be permanently employed from 2015,” he said.
A dispute was declared in 2019 and was referred to arbitration, resulting in the workers being granted backpay of R8.8 million which had to be paid by December 15, 2020.
“The municipality ignored this legally binding award and did not pay the workers. As a fighting union, we are taking this to its logical conclusion. We do not want municipalities to smile at the expense of workers,” says Ndunyana.
The union called a halt to the auction as it says the municipality had agreed to settle the outstanding payments within a few days.
Nelson Mandela Bay municipality is in a stand-off with National Treasury, which has withheld R1.6 billion in conditional grant funding from the city because it failed to elect a mayor and a properly qualified municipal manager.
Nqaba Bhanga who was elected as the new mayor for Nelson Mandela Bay last week blamed the ANC for the breakdown in service delivery and promised to return order and good governance to the city.
This article first appeared in www.moneyweb.co.za and is republished with permission.
