Last month they were contracted to do a job they were never paid for.<\/p>\n
It consisted of digging trenches along long stretches of road and included the digging up of residents gardens, front yards and even driveways.<\/p>\n
Three weeks ago the workers downed tools and refused to work further until they were paid.<\/p>\n
The situation reached boiling point outside the Middelburg Police Station, where workers threatened a supervisor and demanded payment.<\/p>\n
21 days later and they still have not been paid.<\/p>\n
In a statement released to the\u00a0Middelburg Observer<\/i>, MTN SA said that they view the situation very seriously and have been discussing the inconvenience to residents with the contractor to have the situation resolved.<\/p>\n
Khosi Mahlangu, one of the workers, told the\u00a0Middelburg Observer<\/i>\u00a0this week that the contractor identified only as \u201cAndries\u201d has been dismissed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been told that Andries was let go and another contractor has been appointed. He held discussions with us and we have been assured that we will receive payment this Friday,\u201d he said.
\nMeanwhile, more workers have been appointed and the trenches in Protea Street have since been closed. The contractor has now started digging in Eastdene, Middelburg CBD and other areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 300 workers who were tasked to dig trenches all over Middelburg, including Kanonkop, Mineralia and now Eastdene, for the installation of an MTN fibre cable network, stated this week that they have been promised to be paid on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":69604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Yaseen Gaffar","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[7246,7244,7247,21966,1397,7245,5161,7243],"class_list":["post-69603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines","tag-contractors","tag-diggers","tag-fibre-cables","tag-middelburg","tag-mtn","tag-mtn-sa","tag-police-station","tag-trench"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"tag_labels":["contractors","diggers","fibre cables","middelburg","MTN","MTN SA","Police station","trench"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}