Pretoria - ActionSA wants to set up a special committee to speed up the insourcing of security and cleaning personnel in the City of Tshwane and other spheres of government in the country.
This was announced by party president Herman Mashaba during a gathering of security guards and cleaners at Princess Park in Pretoria on Saturday.
Mashaba, who was instrumental in the insourcing of security guards and cleaners in the City of Joburg during his tenure as executive mayor, said insourcing of employees was one of ActionSA’s key election promises in the 2021 municipal polls.
He told his audience that ActionSA was committed to making a reality insourcing in the three spheres of government.
In Tshwane, he said, the party would lobby mayor Cilliers Brink and council to implement insourcing within the ambit of the law.
Under a special committee led by Gauteng chairperson Funzi Ngobeni, the party said the insourcing programme would no longer focus on Joburg and Tshwane, but become a national project.
“We believe that the establishment of this special committee, which will have representatives of both cleaning and security personnel as well as the ActionSA City of Tshwane caucus leader Jackie Mathabathe, will help expedite this process,” Mashaba said.
He promised workers that ActionSA would pursue all avenues within the multi-party government to keep to its 2021 promise of insourcing in the coming days.
“As mayor of the City of Joburg, I witnessed first-hand the dignity insourcing brought to thousands of employees who no longer had to be subjected to the harmful practices of labour brokers. This is why ActionSA remains committed to achieving similar success in the City of Tshwane,” he said.
He said ActionSA repeatedly lobbied the multi-party government to insource security and cleaning personnel, “but it took the former mayor Randall Williams over two years to supply us with a report on insourcing”.
“This was, in part, why ActionSA called for his resignation. With the appointment of the new mayor, and ActionSA having two members on the mayoral committee, we will lobby the new mayor Cilliers Brink and the city council to ensure insourcing occurs, taking place within the conscript of the laws of the Republic of South Africa, including consideration of current contractual obligations with service providers,” Mashaba said.
He promised that his party would remain “fully committed to the workers of the City of Tshwane to ensure that their conditions improve and that they get the rights they deserve”.
“ActionSA is taking this matter of labour brokers within all three spheres of government to our inaugural policy conference taking place from September 12 to 14, for consideration for this system of exploitation to be scrapped,” he said.
In March security guards working under private companies contracted to the City marched to Tshwane House in an effort to pressurise the metro to hire them as part of a council resolution taken in 2018.
The city then resolved to abolish the hiring of private security companies and employ 4 000 guards as part of a new directorate called the Asset Protection Unit under the auspices of the Tshwane metro police department.
They called on the municipality to honour the agreement of insourcing at least 4 000 security guards.
Last year, Williams ruled out hiring security guards, warning that such a decision could cripple the metro’s finances.
He said the City’s salary bill was deemed to be unsustainable after it had jumped to 50% over the years.
Pretoria News