North West municipal workers concerned by ongoing salary crisis

There is a growing concern among some municipal workers in the North West, regarding the ongoing salary crisis affecting several municipalities across the province.

Some municipalities have recently failed to pay workers on time. According to the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), in the North West, four municipalities have been struggling to pay workers in recent months.

The union says the Lichtenburg-based Ditsobotla and Schweizer Reneke-based Mamusa are among those municipalities.

The failure of some municipalities to pay workers’ salaries has left many of them worried about their future.

Some of these workers are from Mamusa local municipality in Schweizer Reneke. They were recently not paid their salaries for over two months.

“They paid their service providers, without considering the fact that at least for a period of two months, why can’t they keep something aside for us employees, so that we must not struggle with salaries? So they have been providing service providers.”

“We are affected on the basis that our credit record is affected. And then we failed to provide for our families. We failed to pay our creditors.”

One of the affected employees says he was forced to borrow from loan sharks to survive.

“Non-payment of salaries has severely affected us. We ended up borrowing money from loan sharks because we were supposed to take care of our families. But it is unfortunate because we had to take extraordinary measures, just to make that we survive amid our financial struggles due to non-payment of salaries,” explains Ganare Modisapodi, a Municipal worker.

However, Samwu, in the North West has accused some municipalities of prioritising service providers at the expense of workers.

“The first municipality was Ditsobotla Local Municipality, followed by Mamasu, Maquassi Hills. I think Lekwa-Teemane was part of those municipalities that were struggling to pay workers’ salaries at the end of March. So, it’s a crisis. Normally, what we have observed is that the employer will then pay service providers, before they can actually pay workers,” says Vincent Diphoko, the North West Samwu provincial secretary.

North West MEC for Cooperative Governance, Gaoage Molapisi, has urged municipalities to devise other ways to ensure financial viability, to deal with salary challenges.

“The norm is for a municipality in terms of revenue collections to collect 95%. But we know that many of our communities are very poor, they can’t pay, and municipalities depend largely on the grant. So, we are encouraging municipalities to more especially those who largely depend on the grants, to look and device other ways and means of ensuring that they don’t only depend on the grants.”

Samwu is also calling on the North West government to intervene in the ongoing salary crisis affecting workers in several municipalities across the province.

Reporting by Thabiso Moss