GroundUp reports that on Wednesday, Eastern Cape Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Xolile Nqatha lashed out at striking municipal workers and blamed them for triggering panic and a water crisis affecting tens of thousands of Amathole District Municipality residents.

The municipality also blamed the strike for the water outages and said there had also been sabotage of infrastructure. But workers at Amathole Municipality said the MEC was ignoring the issues and instead inciting the community against them. Workers claim they have not had a salary increase for three years and they are also demanding Covid allowances, which they say were promised but never paid. According to residents, taps ran dry in Butterworth and Fort Beaufort the week before last. But, the workers maintain that they only went on strike on Wednesday last week, after talks with acting Municipal Manager Moatlhodi Mosala broke down. SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) shop steward Lorna Lubedu said the real cause of the outages was management failing to service pumps and maintain the water infrastructure. She denied worker involvement in sabotage. Mongezi Mabhece of the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) blamed dismissed municipal manager Thandekile Mnyimba for the strike. “There was a collective [bargaining] agreement that was signed by all the parties for three years, but Mnyimba decided willy-nilly as a municipal manager that he was not going to implement it,” said Mabhece. A meeting was due to be held on Friday between the Amathole leadership and union representatives. Meanwhile, water outages remain in palce across the enormous municipal district.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Johnnie Isaac & Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik at GroundUp

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