The Vhembe District Municipality was reduced into a demonstration battlefield on Tuesday when angry members of the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) engaged in a demonstration to demand better pay.

Marchers became angrier when no one from the office of the district mayor came forward to take their memorandum. This is the second time that no municipal official has come forward to receive the memorandum. On Monday, the same demonstrators went back disappointed because there was no official coming forward to take the memorandum.

The disappointed chairperson of Samwu in the Vhembe District Municipality, Thixwedzwi Mamphiswana, said: “We have no other alternative but to forward our grievances to the provincial MEC for Local Government and Housing. We came here the previous day and it is still the same thing. Maybe the higher authorities will listen to our demands. During Women’s Day, women handed a memorandum to President Thabo Mbeki and he accepted it. Who are they to refuse our memorandum? We will not rest until our grievances are attended to.”

Mamphiswana said the march was never meant to disturb service delivery because it was conducted during the lunch hour. The memorandum indicated that, since the Vhembe District Municipality was introduced in 2000, employees have been paid through the Interim Salary Scales Structure that was developed in 2001, which did not follow any guideline or benchmarking. It further indicated that a large number of skilled labourers have left the employ of the council because of uncompetitive salary scales and this has compromised service delivery and contributed to a large amount of roll-overs, due to a shortage of skilled personnel.

The memorandum continued: “A recent Strategic Planning Session has acknowledged high staff turnover and resolved to address it by implementing salary scale benchmarking with other districts of the same grade in order to close huge salary gaps and discrepancies and to attract more skilled personnel for the acceleration of service delivery. The latest Council that was held on the 24th July 2006 endorsed the Strategic Planning resolutions through a council resolution no. 30/2006 and mandated the Executive Mayor to implement the salary scale benchmarking and report in the next council meeting. The Strategic Planning session acknowledged that high staff turnovers is caused by uncompetitive salary structure and thus resolved that attempts to review salary scales were made during the term of the previous council. As a result, Price Waterhouse Coopers Commission was appointed to investigate. To date, the results of the commission are still pending. Municipalities in the previous regime were graded into categories ranging from 1 to 5, according to a 13-point formula. The salary scales of municipal staff were then linked to the grading of the municipality at the time, and although the grading of municipalities has in the meantime changed, the salary scales of Vhembe District Municipality have remained unchanged since the previous regime…”

In a telephonic conversation, the spokesperson for the Vhembe District Municipality, Ndivhuwo Mamathuba said the executive mayor, Irene Mutsila, was away on other official commitments. Mamathuba, who himself was not in the office, referred Mirror to the acting executive mayor, Lucy Mulaudzi. On arrival at the executive mayor’s office block, Mirror found the secretary’s office locked. Attempts to reach the acting executive mayor were fruitless as her office telephone kept on ringing.