Cleaners from Wits University have joined the student fees protest. Lorraine Masanabo who has been working at Wits for 15 years said that since outsourcing of the cleaners started in 2 000, benefits were cut and their salary never increased. “We have children to feed, clothe and put through school and we can’t afford this because the companies that the university contracts underpays us,” she said.
The cleaners claim that they are paid between R2 500 and R2 709 per month, depending on which shifts they are given. They further added that they are only paid R84 a day when they worked on public holidays and weekends. Masanabo added that she had a 20-year-old daughter who attends the University of Johannesburg. Her daughter had to utilise the NSFAS funding as Masanabo could not fully afford to pay university fees.
“My daughter can’t even attend here at Wits even though the full-time staffers got huge discounts for their children to attend here,” she added. The cleaners added that some of them are paid up to R500 for transport, which is not enough, and they live off borrowing money from loan sharks in order to make ends meet.
The cleaners allege that during university holidays, Wits held conferences at its main campus and that they were not compensated for any extra work that they did during this time. Another contention among the cleaners was their leave days that they claim they do not get in full. “Our leave days are cut because of the December holidays but the full-time staff get their full leave plus school holidays,” Abigail Mtshololo said.
She added that the cleaners wanted better opportunities, better salaries and a pension fund among other things. Mtshololo, who has been working at Wits for four years, said that the cleaners worked under immense pressure and that only the students stood up for them. She pointed out that the university did not treat them right and they felt invisible and unhappy at Wits.
“We want to be permanently employed by the university and this outsourcing must be scrapped,” she said.
Related Stories: Students get 0
