Angry toilet cleaners take complaints to Town Hall
THE taxi-rank toilet cleaners who lost their jobs last week staged a sit-in at the Uitenhage Town Hall yesterday.
They lost their jobs as municipal staff will now clean the toilets at the Border Alliance Taxi Rank.
The work was previously outsourced but cost-cutting led to the contracts not being renewed.
The cleaners started as volunteers in 2013 but were absorbed by Plateau Solution, hired to clean the toilets for the past three months.
They were joined by about 90 residents of KwaLanga, Rosedale and Gerald Smith while they sang freedom songs inside the Town Hall.
The irate cleaners have since locked the toilets at the taxi rank on the corner of Thornhill Street and Durban Road.
One of them, Julia Nketcheni, 79, of KwaNobuhle, said: “I have been helping here for several years but without pay. They have been promising people jobs but all this was in vain.”
Mgcini Mejane, 40, of KwaLanga, said they joined the workers to show solidarity and to highlight poverty and unemployment in the area.
“We demand they go back to their jobs. It cannot be right to dismiss them and soon afterwards for them to be replaced by another group.”
The group left after a municipal official promised to meet them later.
Nelson Mandela Bay deputy mayor Mongameli Bobani met the workers at the Town Hall.
“We have nothing to do with those people who were contracted by a private company,” he said.
“The municipality is doing a good job and we want to provide the muchneeded services to the people of Uitenhage. We condemn people who want to undermine this government.”