Health and safety experts from the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) and journalists were locked out of the Beaconfield Sewage Plant in Kimberley on Thursday, Samwu members said.
The team of experts went to the plant as part of their nationwide inspection of working conditions of their members. Some reporters accompanied the officers on their tours.
”Early this morning, a manager known as Mr Berger, locked all the workers out of the plant,” said Thebe Morake, a Samwu spokesperson on health and safety matters.
”The press has been blocked from visiting this plant, a very old and unmaintained plant which has no medical programme for the workers and virtually none of the legally required protective equipment.
”This confirms that the attitude of management of sewage plants across the country is to hide hazardous working conditions.”
Last Friday, Morake said, Samwu health and safety inspectors visited the Rustenburg Sewage Plant in the North West where workers were forced to work ”knee-deep in sewage without gas masks or protective clothing”.
”[They] collect buckets full of human excrement without gloves, masks, or plastic or leather coverings for their cloth overalls,” Morake said.
The inspection team would on Friday visit the Deneysville Sewage Plant in the Free State and tour the Mokgopong Sewage Plant in Limpopo.
Morake said workers have no protective gear at the Mokgopong Sewage Plant, and there were many unsafe work areas.
”There are many unsafe work areas, where workers can fall into the sewage itself.”
He said the Deneysville Sewage Plant was the worst in the country.
”This is the worst sewage plant in the country. It is not fenced or barricaded. There are people living in the sewage plant, and children playing around in it.
”You can even play soccer there. The community uses the bucket system. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find the police at Deneysville,” he said.
Sol Plaatjes municipality spokesperson Sello Matsie said anybody who wanted to visit the plant was free to do that provided they inform the council.
”We want to put it categorically clear: everybody, with proper arrangements, is free to visit the plant. There is nothing that we are hiding,” Matsie said.
But Morake responded: ”No, he [Matsie] is talking nonsense. What is it that they’re hiding? He phoned to apologise, not sort things out.
”He is trying to make a big issue of the miscommunication. That is not our baby,” Morake said. -Sapa