Samwu: At least 30 municipalities struggling to pay salaries
The South African Municipal Workers Unions (Samwu) has accused the government of failing to prioritise funding for municipalities.
This comes after at least 30 municipalities announced that they will not be able to pay salaries for June and July.
"We are not happy with that action by municipalities to have the guts to write letters to employees who have rendered the service for the month and are told that they are not going to be paid and we are seeing that as a provocation," says Samwu general-secretary Koena Ramotlou.
"The state cannot behave like this continuously and think that we are going to lie low and behave as if things are normal. Things are not normal. They must jack up and do their work."
The union says it's in talks with minister of the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, in an attempt to resolve the matter.
"What we have done now since we realised yesterday that our municipal workers have not been paid, we have since generated a letter that we are going to be sending today to the minister to get feedback on the non-payment of salaries and all the other issues," says Ramotlou.
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