Durban - UTHUKELA District Municipality’s main building in Lyell Street, Ladysmith, was shut down on Thursday for the second time in as many months after a Covid-19 case was identified.
This is the fourth case at the municipality since April.
Employees and an Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) representative felt the building should have been locked down when the first case was identified in April, but instead only a portion of it was closed, fumigated and sanitised.
Imatu claimed management had downplayed the seriousness of the matter.
“We have been critical of the decision to call back our members to work even though some were not essential services workers. It is concerning that we have had four cases since April.
“You can’t treat one unit in a building and ignore the rest because workers spend most of their time in the same building,” Imatu branch chairperson Ntokozo Buthelezi said.
He said workers’ temperatures had not been checked, for the second week, on entry to the building and the union had raised the non-compliance with Covid-19 regulations with management on Wednesday.
“When they (management) called staff to return to work during lockdown level 4, our members panicked. We told them not to return without precautionary measures in place. Unfortunately, some returned to work,” Buthelezi said.
An employee who did not want to be named said: “What do you do when your boss instructs you to return to work?”
The Daily News reported in May that an uThukela employee tested positive for Covid-19 on April 28. The case resulted in 14 essential services workers who were in contact with the man being sent into quarantine.
On Thursday, the municipality said the employee who was infected recently had been at work before he tested positive.
Municipal spokesperson Jabu Mkhonza said the municipality’s Infection, Prevention and Control Unit investigated all identified contacts and they were referred to the doctor for testing and instructed to self-isolate at home for 14 days regardless of their results.
In response to the allegations by Imatu and the employees, Mkhonza said the municipality only used essential services workers.
On screening, he said: “There were issues where the contracts of the two (temperature) scanning personnel expired at the end of June. The municipality has since employed another staffer who resumed duties this week.”
Ndumiso Simelane, secretary of the SA Municipal Workers Union in uThukela, said: “Covid cases are not communicated to the employees until these issues are raised by unions. Even if they deep clean the building, we don’t know who has the virus now because people were just walking in.”