Bus commuters are breathing a huge sigh of relief. Bus services are to resume on Tuesday. Unions have finally reached an agreement with employers.
The four-week-long strike left thousands of commuters inconvenienced and forced to make alternative arrangements.
The National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) says despite the nationwide bus strike ending, there is still a long way to go. The union says there are issues affecting workers that need to be addressed.
Numsa says these include night shift allowance and dual bus drivers among others. Numsa General Secretary, Irvin Jim says had the government intervened in the bus strike, an agreement could have been reached earlier.
“We think if they are not willing to come to the party, the Department of Labour should enforce and push them to pay night shift allowance because it is granted, that is what the basic contract of employment says if workers are working night shift they must be paid allowance for night shift. Secondly on the dual driver issue, we think this is just a mere provocation because many of these companies are paying workers. There are one two or three companies that are not willing to pay drivers when we are driving from here to Cape Town until they put foot on the paddle. We hope to find one another on those issues.”
The City of Cape Town says MyCiti bus service will resume operations on Tuesday. The city has however warned commuters to still expect some initial delays as it will take several hours for the service to settle in.
Normal time schedules are expected to be back to normal on the majority of the routes in the latter part of the day.
