Putco granted court interdict against striking workers
Transport operator Putco has been granted a court interdict to prevent striking workers from blocking the entrances to depots.
The operator approached the court on Thursday morning asking it to ban workers from the depots at the company’s head offices on New Canada Road.
Workers downed tools at the company last week, demanding a 6% salary increase and bonuses payments dating back to 2020.
Putco has so far refused to pay the bonuses due to the fact that the matter is before the Labour Court.
The strike has left more than 150 000 commuters stranded across Gauteng and parts of Mpumalanga.
The company has since threatened to axe workers who have embarked on an unprotected strike but bus drivers have vowed not to back down.
Putco Spokesperson Lindokuhle Xulu says the interdict is a step closer to the resumption of bus services.
"Putco has been granted an order to say that workers or anyone blocking our entrances to our business units must move away from that point. We take this as a victory to say that we are getting a step closer to returning operations to the 150 000 commuters that have been stranded.
“We also heard in court where they were saying unions have to publicly distance themselves from the strike.
"What is going to happen after this is that police will need to come into effect as well as public order policing to remove those people," says Xulu.
Xulu says the finance teams are also working on an alternative to reimbursing the passengers.
"We have seen a lot of walk-ins from people who are essentially saying that because we haven't operated, they need to be reimbursed so that they can continue finding alternative transportation. But the challenge for us has been that while these demonstrations are happening outside our basis of operation, it is unfortunate that no one is going to be in the finance department, no one is going to be in the ticket sales department and therefore we can't process those claims now.
“But we have alerted people that our operations teams in different regions are working on coming up with a plan of how their valued tickets will not expire or go unused because of the time that we did not operate.”
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