Enraged City of Tshwane security officers working under labour brokers/ service providers/ private security companies have vowed to shut down all Municipal sites if the Municipality doesn’t reverse its intention to retrench them.
The toyi-toying officers on Monday morning converged at Tshwane House, which is the headquarters of the Municipality, to drive their point home in no uncertain terms regarding their opposition to the looming retrenchments.
“We are here today to protest against the Municipality’s intention to cut the budget it allocates to private security companies for which we work as this will lead to us the workers being retrenched,” said one of the leaders of the march Mpho Leopeng.
“The Municipality is cutting down the budget to the private security companies and the private companies will in turn reduce the number of the security guards it has employed,” said Leopeng.
“I don’t understand as to how the Municipality has conducted risk assessments because their intention from now going forward is to have only one security officer per shift being on duty instead of two officers working together,” he said.
“We are waiting for insourcing and instead of doing that the Municipality is coming with the issue of retrenchments and this means we are being taken for granted here,” emphasised Leopeng.
“We don’t agree with the Municipality’s announcement that it will start absorbing security officers in June after they have been retrenched because not all of them will be re-employed and that means insourcing will benefit the people who didn’t fight for it in the first place while the rightful beneficiaries will be sitting idle at home; jobless,” he stressed.
According Leopeng, the Municipality has announced that it will cut down the budget of the private security companies from 1 April 2026 (Wednesday) and that these private companies/ labour brokers must in turn reduce the number of security guards each of them has hired at various Municipal sites,” he said.
He said the problem is that in actual fact the security officers should be earning three times more than they are presently earning but this money ends up in the pockets of the labour brokers who in turn pay them the proverbial peanuts for their hard work.
“This is traumatic indeed; we are parents, there are single mothers among us; we are renting the shelters that we live in; we have children that have to go to school and we must pay for their school transport and we don’t know how we are going to live as the Municipality has retrenched us with immediate effect,” lamented Leopeng.
He pointed out that Labour laws dictate that three months notice must be given to workers before they are retrenched, yet the Municipality has not done so.
He said as they are not earning enough, they live from hand to mouth as they depend on money that they get from loan sharks (mashonisa) for their survival.
“The question is: who is auditing the performance of these private security companies/ labour brokers on behalf of the Municipality and what kind of report does he submit to the Municipality because at the moment we don’t have work uniforms, provident fund, medical aid schemes and there is nothing right going on for us as security officers, and now instead of insourcing us the Municipality wants to retrench us,” fumed Leopeng.
Now the City of Tshwane Municipality manager has apparently refused to meet with the disgruntled security officers; citing the fact that he can only speak to owners and directors of the private security companies/ labour brokers as they are the ones who have presently taken the Municipality to court regarding the decision of the Municipality to cut down their budget.
The case will be heard in court on Tuesday.
“We declare a shutdown and won’t go to work until we are given the absorption that we have been demanding all along,” said Leopeng.
“All along the City has been saying it doesn’t have the budget to insource us but it is strange that it has the money to pay the private security companies large millions of rand, and that money would be saved because each security officer only requires R10 000 to R12 000 monthly salary,” explained Leopeng.
“All officers won’t go back to work starting now until the Municipality realises that what they are doing is a trauma to the black nation,” he said.
Nthabiseng Masipa of MK Party in Tshwane lamented the fact that the said labour brokers that are doing injustice to the security officers are owned by some Councillors and officials of the Municipality.
“This retrenchment process stems from mismanagement of funds by the Municipality of Tshwane and what will happen to the retrenched security officers?” she asked.
“We are therefore saying the Municipality must stop this nonsense of retrenching them so as to make sure that Municipal buildings remain guarded at all times,” she said.
Besides the MK Party, the Progressive Civics Congress also lended its support to the embattled City of Tshwane Municipality security guards.
About 200 security officers protested at Tshwane House on Tuesday holding placards, singing and dancing while calling for the City of Tshwane to reverse the retrenchment process.
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