Shivambu 'instructs caretaker mayor' Bobani to hire 600 security staff

All security guards and cleaners who were left out on a limb when the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality cut ties with private security firms must be insourced.

This was the instruction given by EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu after he and scores of EFF members and supporters marched to the Port Elizabeth City Hall to hand over a memorandum of grievances.

They are demanding that the municipality should hire an additional 600 security staff who lost their jobs when the municipality stopped using private firms.

This is over and above the almost 700 staff who were insourced in 2018 and at the start of 2019.

The memorandum was accepted by mayor Mongameli Bobani.

Shivambu said they were not at the City Hall to request anything but to give an instruction to the “caretaker mayor”.

“We came to say this is what must happen in the immediate term because when you hold the position of mayor on our behalf at least do this in the meantime because there is no one who has won elections here in Nelson Mandela Bay.

“We are not here to negotiate anything, but to give clear instructions, which is there must be insourcing of security guards after only part of them were insourced and it must happen before the end of June,” Shivambu said.

The EFF’s demands include

• Electrification of informal settlements;
• Making land available for serviced sites and agricultural purposes;
• Insourcing of labour broker workers working for the municipality
• Insourcing the remaining security guards, inclusive of Mandela Bay Development Agency guards;
• and unlocking entry level jobs.

In response, Bobani said electricity was being installed in an informal settlement in Motherwell and would be rolled out to other areas as well.