THOHOYANDOU - The Thulamela Municipality said the group of cleaners who recently went on strike is giving the municipality a bad name.

A spokesman for the municipality this week responded to an incident that took place about two weeks ago. According to the spokesperson of Thulamela Municipality, Mr Ndwamato Tshiila, the municipality did not register the members of the group that are cleaning Sibasa as volunteers.

Tshiila said that the municipality has its own cleaners and all volunteers are on the municipality's books. "They must stop giving a bad name to the Thulamela municipality," Tshiila said.

* Meanwhile, a new group, the Thohoyandou Integrated Waste Management Recyclers, says they were employed in 2000 and were told that they are supposed to work for three months without pay and on the fourth month they will be paid.

"We were given R50 each for transport and since then we have just been working for nothing," they said.

A mother of seven, from Itsani Village, told Mirror that she had joined the Thohoyandou Integrated Waste Management four years ago, thinking that she would get paid, "but I am eating dust."

She said that her husband died in 1997 and since then it has been extremely difficult to make ends meet. "We sell cardboard boxes in order to earn something and we collect damaged cabbages in order to eat at home," they said.

"Thulamela Municipality must think of our future," they said.