Pretoria News reports that labour federation Cosatu is the latest organisation to launch an attack on City of Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink, calling for his resignation.
The mounting pressure for his head comes against the backdrop of municipal employees’ strike action that has entered its fourth month. Service delivery in the capital city has taken a huge hit since the strike began in July. Workers are demanding a pay increase but the metro has refused to budge, saying its coffers are empty. Exacerbating matters, city management has fired more than 100 workers who participated in the unprotected strike. Cosatu led a march to Tshwane House on Friday, as part of the International Day of Decent Work, to deliver a memorandum to Brink. It demanded that he reinstate the 123 dismissed workers and pay the 5.4% increase agreed at the local government bargaining council. “Brink if you can’t rule, leave the office, if you cannot govern this municipality resign with immediate effect,” Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi said. She launched an attack on Brink’s party, the DA, saying its days of governing municipalities in Gauteng were “numbered”. Last week Cope’s Ofentse Moalusi was the first to call for Brink’s resignation. He called his term of office as mayor a “disgraceful failure” and accused Brink of “plunging the city into a state of disaster”. Even though ActionSA, which is part of the Tshwane coalition government, has not directly called for Brink to resign, the party has launched an attack on Brink by calling for intervention by the coalition management committee and for Brink to go back to the negotiating table.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mashudu Sadike at Pretoria News
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