‘No pay for 3 months’: Factory staff gatvol of not getting salaries and dilapidated building
TOUGH: Workers upset at dire working conditions.
Workers at a factory in Blackheath claim they have been waiting for more than three months to get paid.
Besides their alleged “horrid working conditions”, the workers of Syringa Precast Walls said they have shown up for work every day without knowing whether or not the company still exists.
The Daily Voice went to visit the site in Rand Road on Thursday.
Breyton Taylor, 23, who is a spokesperson for the group of workers, led the way through the dilapidated building, and pointing to the leaking ceiling said: “This place never looked like this when the previous owner was still here.
“That man cared about us as workers, he paid us on time and fixed whatever needed to be fixed. Now, we are left with an almost empty building with no actual guarantee that we have a job, but we still show up.”
Taylor said he had been working for the vibracrete company since 2019, for R900 a week.
“We were busy, always assisting clients but since 2022 when Ebrahim passed on, things started going south and no one looked after the workers.
“Ebrahim’s wife Madenia Ismail took over and then her brother, and then everything just went quiet.
“They asked my father to take care of the workers and pay them, but there were months when there wasn’t even money to give people’s salary. And all Madenia does is come up with excuses and when she didn’t have excuses, there was no communication.”
But according to Madenia, the factory is no longer operational and that workers were informed of that months ago.
When the Daily Voice spoke to Madenia, she said she went into a four-month period of mourning after her husband’s death, as required by her religion, and asked her brother to run the business.
“However, the workers didn’t want to work with my brother and then I gave Breyton’s father, who was my husband’s friend, a chance to run the company that is still in my husband’s name,” she said.
“Syringa has been around for more than 30 years and right now I am getting the blame even when I don’t benefit from the company.
“According to my knowledge, the workers did get paid and the state of the building isn’t something I can comment on because I haven’t been there to see the problems from the beginning.
“I also told them there isn’t work.”
Breyton, however, said they were told niks.