King Sabata Dalindyebo (KSD) Local Municipality Community Services director, Fundisile Guleni, has revealed that the staff morale among employees within the directorate was at an all-time low, prior to the team building session held in Port St Johns on August 31.
Galeni attributed the low staff morale and animosity among workers to disunity within organised labour that goes back to 2018, during the tenure of then executive mayor, Dumani Zozo.
At some point there were two factions of the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) that claimed to be the legitimate trade union within the local municipality.
Guleni says he noticed, during staff meetings, that discussions had deteriorated to personal attacks among staff as some still held grudges against each other, emanating from the days of divisions within organised labour.
“The animosity among workers was so bad that if they were soldiers, I would disarm them for fear they would shoot each other. I noticed this animosity when we had staff meetings that usually deteriorated to staff hurling insults at each other, and there was also a culture of disobeying orders from superiors that were slowly creeping in,” said Guleni.
He said that the teambuilding session, held at Mpembeni Plateau in Port St Johns, afforded staff an opportunity to air issues they were not happy about, and reconcile their differences whilst also boosting staff morale.
Guleni added that no money from municipal coffers had been spent during the teambuilding session, as the trip was funded through staff contributions.
“We took a decision to raise funds within the directorate to avoid the trip being labelled as wasteful expenditure. General managers and directors within the directorate each contributed R1 000; supervisors contributed R600 each; councillors contributed R500 each and general workers each contributed R250,” said Guleni.
He described the teambuilding session as very successful, as staff came back rejuvenated and looking forward to contributing towards delivery of services to KSD municipality citizens.
“The Community Services Directorate is critical to the municipality as the coalface of service delivery, such as cleaning and beautifying our towns, fighting the scourge of illegal dumping, and mitigating the devastating effects of climate change. It, therefore, becomes important that we maintain high staff morale and the teambuilding session really went a long way in achieving that,” Guleni concluded.
Excellence awards were bestowed on the best performing staff members during the session.
