Tshwane bus service abruptly halted over unpaid salaries

The City of Tshwane’s bus service came to an abrupt halt over allegedly unpaid salaries on Friday morning.

“Please be informed of the bus service disruption affecting Centurion, Westpark, Danville, Olievenhoutbosch, CBD and northeast of Pretoria due to employees’ protest alleging they were not paid,” said metro spokesperson Selby Bokaba.

“We are doing everything possible to resolve the matter.”

The downing of tools came after the metro’s management assured workers who had not yet received their salaries that they would receive them by midnight on Thursday, 27 August and Friday, 28 August respectively.

This after the metro undertook a process to verify employees in a bid to root out ghost employees earlier this month from 14 – 19 August.

“Throngs of employees heed the call in the last minute ditch to confirm their employment status,” said head administrator Mpho Nawa.

“Some of the employees whose status had been verified but did not receive their salaries in the morning would receive payment before midnight tonight [Thursday] while the outstanding ones who presented themselves today for verification would be paid through the ‘special’ salary run scheduled for tomorrow [Friday].”

Nawa also denied allegations made by a union alleging the salaries of over 7,000 employees were unlawfully withheld.

“It is patently false to accuse the administrators of withholding the salaries of more than 7,000 employees.

“This verification process was meant for all the people of Tshwane to know that they are paying the salaries of people that are legally on the city’s payroll,” he said.

He added that the process “sadly” uncovered ghost workers who had been “fleecing the people of Tshwane of their hard-earned monies by unlawfully, illegally and fraudulently drawing salaries they did not deserve”.

He further stated the group of administrators who were deployed to manage the city were “unflinching” in the quest to rid the metro of ghost employees.

“We didn’t deploy ourselves to the City of Tshwane, we have a duty to restore the city to its previous glory days and create a cohort of professional civil servants that are dedicated and committed to serving the residents of the capital city irrespective of the political affiliation.

“When our time is up, we will gladly leave the city with a clear conscience knowing that we have fulfilled our mandate to the best of our ability,” said Nawa.

This article first appeared on Rekord and was republished with permission.

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