The City of Tshwane’s bus service employees stopped its operation on Friday morning over allegedly unpaid salaries.
Metro spokesperson, Selby Bokaba said “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”.
“We are doing everything possible to resolve the matter”.
The staff stopped their operation after the metro’s management told them that the unpaid workers would receive their salary on Thursday, 27 August and Friday, 28 August respectively.
This was after the company undertook a verification process to fish out ghost workers early this month from 14 – 19 August.
The head administrator Mpho Nawa said “throngs of employees heed the call in the last minute ditch to confirm their employment status”.
“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 denied allegations made by a union saying that the management unlawfully withheld salaries of over 7,000 employees.
“It is patently false to accuse the administrators of withholding the salaries of more than 7,000 employees.
He said the uncovering of the ghost workers was to let “the people of Tshwane to know that they are paying the salaries of people that are legally on the city’s payroll “.
“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.
