Salary Disputes Cause Public Servants To Strike

// September 16th, 2004 // General // 1,912 views

Only in South Africa?

According to iafrica.com, “Hundreds of thousands of public servants were poised on Thursday morning to join what has been billed as South Africa’s largest ever pay strike.”

“About 400 000 public servants downed tools over wages in the country’s last big strike in 1999, but this time around they are expecting over 500 000 to do so.”

Now this begs the question, if public servants from the police force, medical care and education sector decide to go through with this, what chaos will reign in our beloved country?

Government negotiator Kenny Govender did warn that essential services staff participating in the strike would face disciplinary action, which included police, nurses, prison warders, border control staff, and emergency services.

Now conspiracy theorists may expect choas on our roads, robberies, looting etc. to prevail, but then what makes this so different? Do these things not happen on a daily basis in any case?

Interestingly, economists predict that this action will ‘cost’ the South African economy between R200-million and R1-billion. Now that’s a ballpark figure if I’ve ever seen one. Regardless, for a country that only generates R4bn a day, one quarter is quite a significant amount of money.

I just hope that there will be adequate services for our children at school, effective law enforcement and sustainable healthcare in our hospitals today.

Be Sociable, Share!