City of Tshwane warns staff to expose strikers who are intimidating others or face consequences

The City of Tshwane is continuing to root out employees taking part in the unlawful South African Municipal Workers' Union (Samwu) strike, giving most of its electricity switching teams until Monday morning to report the culprits behind alleged intimidation or face possible sanctions.

On Sunday night the city accused teams across all its regions, except in region seven, of failing to "perform their duties during the ongoing unlawful strike".

Parts of the city have been plunged into darkness, some for as many as five days, after  teams failed to carry out their duties and claimed they were  intimidated by striking employees. 

Samwu members have been on strike since last week over the non-payment of salary increases by the city.

This forced the city to take the "extraordinary step" of issuing 89 letters to the affected teams. 

"The switching teams are the first people to respond to electricity outages. Their duty, primarily, is to isolate faults and issue permits for testing or a working permit if there is a need," the city said.

"They're also responsible for restoration of power on network faults. The switching teams, who play a critical role in the electricity value chain, absconded from work for the second week, claiming to be intimidated by their striking colleagues.

"The city has instructed them, in writing, to identify the persons/employees who are intimidating or preventing them from performing their duties. Furthermore, they were instructed that failure to identify their alleged intimidators will result in them being deemed to be part of the unprotected and unlawful strike and were warned that all the applicable provisions to employees who are on strike will be applicable to them."

Those claiming to be prevented by the strikers from working have been given until 11am on Monday to submit written responses.

The city also provided an update on its urgent bid to have striking workers held in contempt of court over their continued protest despite an interim interdict by the labour court declaring the strike “unlawful and unprotected” and ordering workers to call it off.

Judgment on the matter was reserved last week and is expected to be delivered on Monday 

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