Durban: Electricity contractors, who work for the eThekwini Municipality, say they have not been paid by the City over the past few months and therefore will not be able to carry out work over the festive season.
On Friday, the contractors staged a march to the Durban City Hall where a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was handed over to eThekwini
officials, calling for unpaid invoices to be paid. President of the eThekwini Electrical Workforce, Bandile Sibiya, said that they (contractors) are frustrated about the unpaid invoices.
“We had the same situation last year where workers were not getting paid before Christmas, and we can’t keep having the same situation (again).”
Sibiya added that contractors would not be able to do any work during the festive season.
“It’s something we want to do but how do we continue? We don’t have money for food, we don’t have money to pay our bills and we can’t take care of our families. We are even finding workers (who) are losing their assets because they can’t pay for it.”
Sibiya said, “We want to be clear (that)we are not downing tools; we are not able to work because we don’t have the money to continue working.”
He explained the impact of not having the electrical contractors on duty, saying it would be the residents who would suffer.
“When there is an outage during the festive season and the City needs an electrician, they are simply not going to find anyone on duty. The consumers are going to be left in the dark with no electricians to resolve electrical faults.
“We are putting our lives at risk and anything can happen to us while we are repairing faults. We can’t take that risk if we are not getting paid.
“Remember, everything that takes place in the City relies on electricity and if we are not there, everything will come to a standstill. The issue is (that) we are being forced into this situation.”
While the eThekwini Municipality had not responded to a request for comment by deadline, Mayor Cyril Xaba told SABC News that the law states that contractors must be paid within 30 days of invoicing.
“So, it is a matter that we are looking at. It is a matter that we are monitoring as the executive council and the executive committee of this council, and our city manager reports on how well we are performing on our target to ensure that we pay our service providers within 30 days.”