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Sanral battles strike action headache

Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
By Simnikiwe Mzekandaba, IT in government editor
Johannesburg, 03 May 2016
Outa blasts Sanral for not instructing its agents and suppliers to ensure decent living wages for workers.
Outa blasts Sanral for not instructing its agents and suppliers to ensure decent living wages for workers.

Teti Traffic employees are taking part in industrial action on the N1 highway in Midrand, demanding a pay hike of 130%. Teti Traffic is a direct sub-contractor and traffic incidents management company on behalf of the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral).

Eyewitness News reported this morning that Teti Traffic employees who say they have not received a salary increase since 2012 were making their way to the roads agency's offices in Midrand.

The strike action follows reports that Teti Traffic and the South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union (Satawu) would embark on conciliation talks on Wednesday following the declaration of a strike, after a deadlock over the union's demand of up to 130% in salary increases.

According to an agreement reached at the meeting, the union is responsible for discipline and order during a strike. Satawu members are only allowed to gather at the Central Operation Centre in Midrand.

Sanral has since issued a statement noting the employees embarking on an industrial action are not its workers.

"Sanral would like to emphasise that none of its employees are on strike. Sanral has 283 employees spread across the country in its four regional offices and head office, and most of them are engineers.

"The striking workers are employed by Teti Traffic, a traffic incidents management company contracted to Sanral to manage traffic incidents on its freeway network in Gauteng," according to the statement.

"We are confident that Teti, together with Satawu, which is negotiating on behalf of striking workers, will find an amicable solution very soon so that motorists are not severely affected by this action," says Vusi Mona, Sanral's general manager for communications.

As an interested party, Sanral would like to see an agreement between the two parties being reached as soon as possible, so that normal traffic incident management can resume, notes the statement.

Law-abiding motorists

Earlier this year, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) noted only 9% of motorists using Gauteng freeways are paying towards the controversial e-toll system.

According to statistics released by transport minister Dipuo Peters, last year e-toll payments were R76 million for May and R78 million for June. Meanwhile, payments in January and March 2015 ranged between R45 million and R68 million respectively.

To encourage payment of historical e-tolls debt in arrears, Sanral introduced a Less60 campaign for overdue accounts. To qualify for a 60% discount, motorists were expected to settle their outstanding debt within six months - giving them until 2 May to pay up.

Sanral says over 300 000 e-toll defaulters in Gauteng took advantage of the 60% discount on debt. The offer ended at midnight last night.

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