Cash-in-transit security guards threatened to strike in response to the recent spate of violent heists, the Motor Transport Workers’ Union (MTWU) said on Wednesday.
”The union met with shop stewards from around the country today [Wednesday] on the crisis. It has had enough and will down tools countrywide with immediate effect unless immediate steps are taken to deal with the situation,” said union general secretary Emily Fourie.
This follows a shoot-out between robbers and security guards in central Johannesburg on Tuesday in which a one-year-old baby was shot dead and seven bystanders were injured.
Fourie said the MTWU represents about 90% of the guards manning cash-in-transit vehicles.
ATMs would be left without money and shops with no way to transport their funds unless the minister of safety and security and top police met the MTWU to find a way forward, Fourie said.
”We want a state of emergency to be declared, we want the army called in and we want this anarchy to stop. It is suicide to send these security personnel out with 9mm weapons when they are up against these criminals who are armed to the teeth.”
She said police were ”nowhere to be seen” during the heists and were ”generally outgunned themselves”.
”We don’t want them looking for the murderers of our members, we want them to be working with us to ensure they get to go home to their families at night.”
Fourie said that guards are not only at the mercy of heist gangs, but are harassed and arrested by ”paranoid employers” who suspect them of conspiring with robbers.
”We are being attacked on all fronts, and we cannot and will not take it any more,” Fourie said. — Sapa