Cape Town - A group of around 100 senior citizens was left disappointed after the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) stood them up at the aquarium, which they were due to visit.
The former shop stewards were supposed to enjoy a day out at the Two Oceans Aquarium at the V&A Waterfront on Tuesday, when they were informed at the entrance that the excursion had been cancelled.
Carol Carolis, 65, said they had to walk 4km to the Cape Town train station from the aquarium.
“We were looking forward to being at the aquarium. I have been there before but then some people had never been there.
“It was such a disappointment to not go in. We came from different parts of the city, I’m from Retreat, some were from Kuils River, Mitchells Plain and other places.
“The Cosatu people arranged this trip. We have our chairperson at the church, and he sent us the excursion schedule for the year and confirmed with me on Tuesday morning and said there was going to be a bus from the Waterfront side that would take us to the aquarium.”
She explained that they took the train to the city centre.
“The man wasn’t there, and he said he was already there and that he would meet us in town. We got to Cape Town and had to pay money to get to the aquarium, and we paid for some people because it would have been unfair to leave others behind. The arrangement was that we were going to ride the bus to the aquarium for free.
“When we got to the aquarium, I went inside and I found other ladies who were sitting there and asked the staff about the seniors.
“They asked if we didn’t know that the event had been cancelled.
“And there were more than 100 people who were outside and there were more coming.
“We were ready to attack because this is not the first time they’ve done this to us – it happened last year at another venue. This is painful.”
The grannies said they were angry that they had to use more money from their pockets when they had to buy train tickets.
“We were not prepared to pay so much money for travelling because Cosatu was going to pay for everything and we were supposed to take the train for free. We had older people who didn’t know what to do once we got to the station.”
Cosatu’s provincial secretary, Malvern de Bruyn, said the outing was cancelled due to their upcoming election campaign work.
He said they had spoken to chairpersons, and it was their responsibility to filter down the message.
“I will address this matter with the chairpersons and find out why they didn’t relay the message to their clubs,” De Bruyn said.
“We will resume with such programmes in June. We sent out communication to all clubs that we were cancelling all the outings.”