The outsource security guards working under City of Tshwane spend a blank and a terrible festive season.
This comes after they did not receive their three months’ salary owes to them by the municipality.
The security guard’s pickets outside Tshwane House on Monday demanding the city to pay them their 3 months’ salary.
Security guards were joined by the (SACSAAWU) South African Cleaners Security and Allied Workers Union.
The security guards vow that they will not go back to work unless they received their money.
Speaking to Tshwane security guard’s spokesperson Hlengiwe Ngwenya told the Tshwane Talks that we are outsource security guards working under the City of Tshwane.
We are working under private companies. We came to Tshwane House to engage with the officials about our non 3 months’ salary that we did not get.
We had a horrible Christmas, and it was very painful one as most of us are the breadwinners in our families.
Security guards came to work for the past three months without getting any payments.
“This is a slap in the face by the City of Tshwane and this is painful.
We risk our lives guarding the municipality building day and night, but they don’t take us seriously,” Ngwenya said.
She said the municipality is threatening them that if they don’t go back to work, they will penalize them or terminate the contract.
The mayor doesn’t think about the struggle the security guards are going through every day. Many guards borrowed money to the loan sharks to come to work.
“We had to borrowed money for transports every day from the loan shark to come to work.
Our children Christmas clothes, funeral policies have lapses because of non-payment and our landlords are tired of hearing stories every month,” she said.
Ngwenya said Tshwane don’t think about us and don’t care about us and they don’t take us seriously. We risk our lives day and night guarding City property, and this is how the municipality thanks us.
“We are deep in debts, and we don’t know how we are going to get out or pay the money back to the loan shark and we don’t know when we will get our money,” Ngwenya said.
She said municipality must pay us or else we will picket every day until we get our money.
We are calling on Tshwane to insource us.
The painful part is that Tshwane claim there is no money to absorb them as security officers.
Each and every month they are paying salaries of workers at Tshwane.
They are hiring company, and they must stop that and hire us.
The private companies we are working at claimed Tshwane did not pay them.
“City of Tshwane building will not be attendance, we promise as long as we don’t get our money any building or property of Tshwane will not be guards and no one will hire new person,” she said.
“I fought with my wife, and she thought i spend all the money with friends.
“I’m pleading with municipality to pay our salary because it is breaking our families apart,” Godfrey Nkwena said.
City of Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the delay of security guards was caused by the depletion of the R245 million budget which was appropriated for guarding services for the financial year.
“The rapid depletion of the budget was as a result of the unforeseen unprecedented unlawful and unprotected strike.
We required more manpower for the protection of our assets such as landfill sites, reservoirs and substations,” Bokaba said.
he said the budget for guarding services has been uplifted and we have begun the payment process.
We are hoping to have processed the payments by end of January 2024.
