Bus strike hinders holidaymakers
THOUSANDS of holidaymakers in the Western Cape are scrambling to find alternative transport to travel to their destinations for the Easter weekend.
This after employees in the bus industry across the country downed tools to strike over wage increases. Yesterday, Autopax which owns two of the country’s large bus services, City to City and Translux, confirmed it had refunded some of the passengers who wanted to travel yesterday.
Autopax has also shut down all its services-and is not selling tickets to limit future bookings until the strike is over.
The chairperson of the portfolio committee on transport, Dikeledi Magadzi said, the strike would inconvenience the country in “proportions not witnessed before”.
Many commuters were left stranded at the Cape Town long bus distance terminal yesterday.
Greyhound bus passenger Lwandile Nontsele said: “I am really upset with service of Greyhound, my family and I came this morning at 10am to catch a 11.45am bus to Durban but we were then notified at 11.07am via SMS that the buses will not be operating today.”
The strike began yesterday after negotiations between the employers and the unions reached a deadlock. The workers are demanding a 15% wage increase and the employers are offering 7.5%.
Autopax spokesperson Nozipho Jafta said about 900 employees went on strike yesterday.
In a statement, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) which represents about 1 500 workers, mostly drivers in the Western Cape, said: “Striking has become our last resort .”
MyCiTi said it would extend monthly packages for the time equal to the duration of the national strike to help commuters with monthly passes on their myconnect cards.