City manager calls for municipal employees to return to work
The city would like to assure members of the public that it will do everything in its power to guard against the disruption of service delivery.
THE eThekwini Municipality, City manager, Sipho Nzuza, is urging all workers, who embarked on an industrial action at Water and Waste Water Depots in Pinetown and Springfield, to resume their duties with immediate effect.
This after the city met with the leadership of a trade union and agreed on a comprehensive way forward to resolve employees’ grievances.
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“I believe in an open door policy and at all times I always ask our employees to follow legitimate internal channels to draw our attention as management to their grievances. This is their city and it does not help anyone to compromise service delivery with these strikes because it is the same communities they hail from that are going to suffer. We need to be civil unceasingly and desist from violent means to solve our problems. We had a meeting with the leadership of SAMWU and we have agreed to assemble an independent task team to look at the entire process leading to the appointment to avoid any instability at the workplace,” said Nzuza.
Workers are demanding to be elevated to grade 10 as they claim MK veterans employed in 2016 were unfairly upgraded from grade 4. The City is of the view that all HR processes were followed.
“There are internal HR processes that our employees know need to be followed in the event they feel there is a need to be re-graded. Workers are discouraged from burning tyres and hindering service delivery as management is committed to finding a solution to the current challenges. It has come to our attention that some of our staff were arrested in Pinetown today. Management has been in contact with SAPS. Let’s go back to work,” said Nzuza.
The city would like to assure members of the public that it will do everything in its power to guard against the disruption of service delivery.
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