Premier Zille says Cosatu's provincial secretary's claims that she turn down his requests to meet are a lie.
|||Cape Town - Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich is a hypocrite and a liar, says Premier Helen Zille.
This comes after Ehrenreich accused Zille’s government on Wednesday of ignoring repeated calls to meet the union to discuss concerns about crime, gang violence, education, transport and health.
“Cosatu has consistently been calling for engagements with the government to respond to the social challenges that exist in the Western Cape,” Ehrenreich said. “These calls have however been ignored by the Premier Zille who has an aversion to engaging with the unions/Cosatu because of her own arrogance.”
Ehrenreich this week also threatened a strike if social issues were not addressed.
But Zille hit back on Thursday, saying Ehrenreich’s latest attack was another example of his pattern of political grandstanding and hypocrisy.
Zille’s spokesman, Zak Mbhele, said she had not received a meeting request from Ehrenreich since 2011. “The only meeting request we have received from him was in August 2011 which we agreed to and the meeting took place in October 2011,” Mbhele said. “He then failed to attend the follow-up meeting… a month later.”
Mbhele said Finance, Economic Development and Tourism MEC Alan Winde had also invited him to several meetings in the past, all of which Ehrenreich had either declined or failed to attend. “The Economic Development Partnership (EDP), which is an independent organisation in which stakeholders in the economy have come together to develop and help implement a shared agenda for economic growth, development and inclusion, has repeatedly invited Cosatu to join it. Mr Ehrenreich has steadfastly refused to do so, indicating that he wanted no part in it. The EDP is the precisely the forum where socio-economic issues are being discussed and government is represented as a stakeholder.”
In response, Ehrenreich said Zille was being dishonest.
clayton.barnes@inl.co.za
Cape Argus