Embattled Emfuleni municipality loses all vehicles as sheriff swoops

The Emfuleni Local Municipality is having a rough few weeks. At the end of September, Eskom attached the local council’s bank account, and on Tuesday morning a legal dispute with an employee resulted in the local sheriff attaching all official vehicles on the premises.

This will further affect the council’s ability to provide services to its residents — something it has already been accused of failing or struggling to do. The sheriff’s actions also affect 24 vehicles, worth more than R2m, which were officially added to the fleet at the municipality’s Duncanville depot in mid September.

The attaching of the vehicles comes as a result of one of six different cases over adjustment of job levels, which have been filed in the Gauteng labour court, dating back to 2016. According to court documents, in the possession of Sunday Times Daily, the main contentions were whether the municipal council could amend or downgrade employee job levels on its own, and whether the decisions were of a permanent or interim nature.

The attachment order pertains to wages lost by the municipal workers as a result of the council downgrading salary scales, allegedly without following due process. It links to a settlement agreement reached during arbitration proceedings and other legal processes. 

Municipal spokesperson Makhosonke Sangweni confirmed that the legal action taken on Tuesday related to employee levels and other benefits, as well as other general labour matters.

But he said the sheriff’s actions were premature, as the council was given three months to finalise negotiations with the affected employees in the case — a deadline that is only to expire at the end of October.

“Our legal department is attending to the matter,” he concluded. 

According to DA MPL Kingsol Chabalala, the constituency head of Emfuleni North, the ANC-led council has spent more than R669m on labour disputes with its employees over the past seven financial years.  

This was revealed by the Gauteng cooperative governance MEC Lebogang Maile in a written reply to the DA’s questions tabled in the provincial legislature.

According to Maile, Emfuleni has spent about R500m on legal fees defending labour dispute cases since 2013, and has paid R169,502,688.32 to employees for cases that it has lost.

“In total, the municipality has paid over R669m for legal fees and employee compensation,” it stated.

There are 25 cases that have been referred to the bargaining council, 14 cases to the labour court and three disputes to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), Chabalala said.

“Furthermore, there are 18 awards in favour of employees, of which two have labour court judgments. Only 12 cases were won by the municipality.

“It is also worrying that the employees are winning labour dispute cases and large sums of money are being paid by a municipality that is facing serious cash-flow problems, and pertains only to R28m awarded so far to these employees of the years of deliberation,” Chabalala said.

The DA has called on Maile to investigate the reasons why the municipality had continuous employee issues, and to ascertain whether it was following proper labour legislation and employee code of conduct rules.

With the municipality already paralysed in terms of service delivery, and which had now had all its vehicles attached and repossessed, it did not bode well for residents, Chabalala said.

Meanwhile, in another bruising legal loss, the municipality’s bank accounts have been attached.

Eskom was on September 29 awarded a default judgment against the municipality for the R1.3bn it owes the power utility for unpaid bulk electricity services, which form part of R1.9bn in debt owed.