Unions set to join Cosatu’s anti-corruption strike

AFFLIATES of Cosatu are set to join a nationwide strike against corruption, job losses and state capture next week, but the smaller trade union partners have their own grievances.

The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa), the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) will join Cosatu’s strike next Wednesday.

Denosa’s general secretary, Oscar Phaka, said: “In the health sector where Denosa organises, critical clinical positions in various departments have remained vacant and frozen for far too long.

“This is largely because of lack of funding, which compromises the quality of health-care service while millions of rands go up in smoke mysteriously.

“Many state-owned enterprises are begging for bailouts in the tune of billions largely because of mismanagement of funds. Currently, the Department of Health in Gauteng is under serious financial constraints that even threaten to disrupt the functionality of the department.”

NUM national spokesperson Livhuwani Mammburu said its members plan to use the strike to voice their displeasure with the ANC-led government.

“There is a culture of looting the country’s resources by a network of certain predatory elite, (while) workers are being left out in the cold to fend for themselves in the midst of massive retrenchments taking place in various sectors of the country’s economy, in particular, the mining sector,” Mammburu said.

“The NUM members at Eskom are still against the possible closure of five power stations to accommodate independent power producers. NUM members are calling on the government to completely reverse the decision to close down the five power stations because it will lead to massive retrenchments,” Mammburu said.

Popcru spokesperson Richard Mamabolo added: “We currently have just over 900 000 out of 1.3 million workers in the public sector who do not have houses ... at a time when their pension funds are being threatened by the levels of corrupt activities that have seen our state parastatals collapse into the pockets of individual interests, yet not a single person alleged to be involved has been arrested.”

He said public servants should pressure government to stop the use of the government employees’ retirement funds to bail out parastatals.

NUM PLAN TO USE THE STRIKE TO VOICE ITS DISPLEASURE WITH THE ANC-LED GOVERNMENT