{"id":258467,"date":"2023-04-26T19:33:35","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T17:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/hundreds-of-workers-protest-outside-cogta-office-in-pretoria-for-unpaid-wages\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T19:33:35","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T17:33:35","slug":"hundreds-of-cogta-workers-protest-in-pretoria-over-unpaid-wages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/hundreds-of-cogta-workers-protest-in-pretoria-over-unpaid-wages\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of COGTA workers protest in Pretoria over unpaid wages"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Chris%20Gilili\/cwp_workers_outside_cogta.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/hundreds-of-cogta-workers-protest-in-pretoria-over-unpaid-wages.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Hundreds of Community Work Programme (CWP) workers picket outside the COGTA head office in Pretoria since Tuesday, demanding their unpaid wages. Photos: Chris Gilili<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hundreds of Community Work Programme (CWP) workers, employed by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), have spent two days outside the head office in Pretoria.<\/li>\n<li>They are demanding to be paid their R880 monthly stipend for April.<\/li>\n<li>Workers are complaining that there are payment problems at the end of each financial year when their contracts are to be renewed.<\/li>\n<li>But COGTA says the payment delay is the result of challenges moving the programme from the implementing agent, whose contract ended in March.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hundreds of Community Work Programme (CWP) workers employed by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), have spent two days outside the head office in Pretoria. They are demanding payment of their R880 monthly stipend for April.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/hundreds-of-cogta-workers-protest-in-pretoria-over-unpaid-wages.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, COGTA promised that the salaries would be paid by the end of this week and that it would not renew the contract with the \u201cimplementing agent\u201d which had been managing the CWP workers.<\/p>\n<p>The protest started on Tuesday afternoon when disgruntled workers from different parts of Gauteng went to the Pretoria office and prevented many officials from going home. Calm was restored when police negotiated with protesting workers.<\/p>\n<p>Workers who camped outside the COGTA office told GroundUp that they would not leave until they were all paid. By Wednesday afternoon, there were still about 200 people wearing orange work overalls and chanting while many police officers stood watch.<\/p>\n<p>Jabu Gondwe from Alexandra said, \u201cI have been part of this programme since 2010 when we were earning R480. Every time in April, when our contracts should be renewed, we have this struggle. I clean in different areas around Alex. Now I have run out of food at home. My kids are expecting me to do things for them and I have been giving them excuses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lindelwa Dube, a mother of three from Ivory Park, said COGTA knows that each year the same problem with payments occurs, but doesn\u2019t fix it. \u201cLast week, COGTA told us payments will only be done on 6 May, that\u2019s why we came here to protest. COGTA doesn\u2019t take us seriously. One month you\u2019ll get your stipend on the 31st, another month it\u2019s on the 5th. We have debit orders and policies to pay. We don\u2019t have food in our houses for our children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are not going anywhere until the payment of everyone has been started. I take care of a family of six people, including my unemployed sister\u2019s kids, with this stipend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Chris%20Gilili\/cwp_workers_picket.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/hundreds-of-cogta-workers-protest-in-pretoria-over-unpaid-wages-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">COGTA has promised to pay workers by the end of this week.<\/p>\n<p>Maanda Ashu Workers Union (MAWUSA) spokesperson Simphiwe Hlafa said about 260,800 CWP workers across the country have been affected by this payment issue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCOGTA says this is due to transitions that the programme is undergoing. There are some reforms, like the absorption of some of the workers, which we are celebrating. But now our major issue is that COGTA has just cut the contracts with the agents without a plan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey should have made a contingency plan,\u201d said Hlafa.<\/p>\n<p>COGTA spokesperson Legadima Leso told GroundUp that the department is doing \u201ceverything in its power\u201d to ensure that all CWP workers are paid. Leso confirmed that they would no longer be renewing the implementing agent\u2019s contract, which ended at the end of March. \u201cThere have been serious problems, such as maladministration and things not done accordingly. Now, we will no longer be using these agents. COGTA will now insource the CWP programme. We are also remodelling the programme,\u201d said Leso.<\/p>\n<p>He blamed the payment delay on the implementing agents \u201crefusing to give the data of workers\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Wednesday, COGTA said, \u201cThe current delays with payments are as a result of a transition process from using Implementing Agents to insourcing of the service. The department will process all payments by 3 May 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/hundreds-of-cogta-workers-protest-in-pretoria-over-unpaid-wages.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of Community Work Programme (CWP) workers picket outside the COGTA head office in Pretoria since Tuesday, demanding their unpaid wages. Photos: Chris Gilili Hundreds of Community Work Programme (CWP) workers, employed by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), have spent two days outside the head office in Pretoria. They are demanding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":258468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-258467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/hundreds-of-cogta-workers-protest-in-pretoria-over-unpaid-wages.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}