A group of about 100 security guards marched in Tshwane yesterday calling on the City of Tshwane Municipality to hire them permanently, saying they want job security and “stability”.
The guards say the city must stop outsourcing security contracts and hire them as employees not as contract workers from other companies who tend to put guards on month-to-month contracts creating instability in their lives.
Group leader Joshua Modau said ‘insourcing’ will solve most of their problems.
“First of all, we are working under dangerous sites e.g there are ladies who are working in sub stations because all these private companies care about is money. They don’t care about our lives. I think the city will save instead of continuing with these private companies,” said Modau.
The union is also demanding the implementation of a 2018 council resolution taken at a meeting with the city manager and the mayor that the city must employ qualifying security guards.
Member of the Mayoral Committee responsible for community safety, Grandi Theunissen said the municipality will assess the feasibility and affordability of insourcing the security guards.
“It is very difficult to answer that question right now because It is quite a well known fact that the city has financial constraints as we are standing now. So it will be a lengthy negotiation process that will have to take place.
“We have to do a financial analysis to see to what extent it can be afforded or it can’t be afforded. So without that being done I am not in a position to say yes we can do it or no, we can’t do it. We need a proper analysis to see what it will cost the city.
“Whether the city has got the funds to do it and the capacity to do it and whether they can do it at which stage,” said Theunissen.
