Cape Town - Union members affiliated to Cosatu and Saftu briefly brought parts of the city to a standstill as they marched to three spheres of government over the “worsening socio-economic conditions for the working class and marginalised poor communities”.
The 500-strong group, who marched to the City, the Department of Energy and Minerals, the Legislature and Parliament were seeking the government’s interventions in the “ongoing onslaught on workers”.
The unions’ National Shutdown aimed to address the challenges facing the poor working class, such as the escalating cost of living, load shedding, high petrol prices, rising interest rates, unemployment and job losses.
Saftu president Ruth Ntlokotse said that the workers’ living standards were declining daily and the government was pretending that the situation was normal.
“They are people who are meant to make laws and adopt policies that are affecting the most vulnerable members of society, who are the workers and the poor. The government must go back to the drawing board and review those policies.
“Workers are suffering, there is a high rate of unemployment and it cannot be that the government is pretending that its business as usual,” she said.
Ntlokotse said issues that were raised to the City included issues of evictions, service delivery, transportation, impounding of taxis, and job creation.
“We know that 80% of our members are using the taxi system. This issue of subsidisation and impounding of taxis was raised.
“Our members arrive late at work as a result of some of the by-laws that the City of Cape Town has decided upon,” Ntlokotse said.
She said the union was concerned about the high price of petrol, which was impacting the cost of living as food prices soar.
“There has to be an investigation that will take into cognisance that it cannot be correct that our neighbouring countries are getting electricity from the same source, but when it comes to the price of petrol it’s not the same,” she said.
Neliswa Nkwali from Treatment Action Campaign took aim at the Department of Health and Wellness over the closure of health facilities in poor communities, saying this was affecting residents, especially HIV patients.
“The closure of these facilities means that our members have to travel far to get their medication, which has cost and safety implications.
“Mzamomhle in Nyanga was closed for two months, and one in Mitchells Plain was closed for eight months. The Inzame Zabantu Clinic in Philippi was closed for three because of crime.
“The department must not close these facilities but rather deploy Law Enforcement officers. These closures create unnecessary defaulting on medication. We have enough defaulters caused by long queues and staff attitudes.
“Closing the facilities also means that access to information is denied. We cannot tolerate that as a community and as a working class as health care is our human right,” she said.
General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (Giwusa) secretary Abeedah Adams said that the City was making policies that criminalised the poor working class.
She said the local governments used water and electricity as a source of revenue instead of understanding they were services they had to provide for the residents.
“The City of Cape Town is busy with evictions but fails to spend its housing budget annually and instead returns money to the National Treasury.
“It’s not just the national government that must account, the provincial and local governments must too because of the direct impact they have on our members, and workers on the shop floor, because when they go on to the communities, they are confronted with the issues of high electricity prices, lower housing, water cut-offs,” she said.
The City said it had noted the concerns of the labour unions during their demonstrations and that the memorandum handed over to the City was accepted by the mayor.
“The City needs to reiterate that the key concerns addressed by the unions are already receiving attention, as can be gauged from the speech at the tabling of the annual budget earlier this year,” it said.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the unions’ concerns were mainly crime and load shedding, and that he was busy with these two concerns. Hill-Lewis said on Thursday that the City had launched a new extra deployment of 100 officers in the CBD.