Local employees from the Office of the Premier continue to down tools, demanding change in compensation and organisation within their offices.
They stopped working on Monday morning, and they are currently negotiating with the management. During their demonstration, the SAPS was called to intervene.
“We were addressed by the provincial police commissioner, Lieutenant General Mondli Zuma on Monday and he told us to leave the premises in less than ten minutes. To our surprise on Tuesday they called the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and they came into our offices. The police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse us.
We do not understand why need such a large number of officers to come to our offices when we raise our concerns. We addressed the matter and we were told that we will not be arrested yet the police are still sitting in the second floor of these offices,” said Mr Didi Nkosi from the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union.
Among other things, they demand that they are compensated according to the duties they perform and that an evaluation be done.
“The moratorium policy, that was introduced in 2013, stipulates that if a worker dies or resign they are not replaced, which has resulted in workers having a lot of responsibilities. Transfer of staff into the office of the premier from other departments and provinces must stop, unclear job evaluation process, they don’t want unequal remuneration for equal work, appointments of consultants, deployment of people on contracts only to be absorbed unscrupulous into the system must stop too.
“The victimisation of staff members by Human Resource must end too. There is shortage of resources and we want a bereavement committee,” said Nkosi.
“The management was engaged for such a long time and to this far nothing has been done; only issues of individuals with political relations are attended to. We will not perform our duties until our demands are met and we plan to come to work every day,” he explained.
