Bloemfontein — The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) in the Free State has accused Mangaung Metro Municipality of scapegoating workers for its financial crisis, rejecting City Manager Sello More’s proposal to implement a new shift system as both misleading and unfair.
In a strongly worded statement, SAMWU dismissed the claim that excessive overtime was the root of the metro’s financial woes, pointing instead to damning findings by the Auditor-General of South Africa. The city recently recorded its third consecutive qualified audit opinion, a material deficit of R468 million, and billions in unauthorised (R1.8 billion), irregular (R278 million), and fruitless and wasteful (R130 million) expenditure.
“These figures, along with the under-utilisation of grants and failure to invest in critical infrastructure, cannot be reduced to overtime costs,” SAMWU said. “This is a governance and leadership crisis, not a worker problem.”
The union also criticised the proposed shift system as unworkable, citing chronic staff shortages that force employees to work extended hours to ensure essential services continue. “Workers are not abusing the system. They are carrying the burden of a municipality that has failed to fill critical posts,” SAMWU noted.
While the union stressed its support for fair measures to cut wasteful expenditure and improve service delivery, it vowed to resist any unilateral imposition of new working conditions that undermine existing agreements. SAMWU has called for Mangaung Metro to halt the shift system rollout, engage with organised labour under the Labour Relations Act, and urgently address vacancies and wasteful spending.
The union said it had exhausted internal avenues — including formal letters, meetings with management, and engagements with political leadership — before turning to the courts to safeguard workers’ rights. “We reaffirm our readiness to engage constructively on efficiency and sustainability,” SAMWU concluded, “but we will not allow workers to be scapegoated for failures caused by poor leadership and mismanagement.”
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