Nehawu Mpumalanga slams Nxesi’s ‘misleading’ non-compliance claims of safety measures

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) in the Mpumalanga has slammed Minister of Employment and Labour Thula Nxesi after he claimed his department did not receive any occupational health and safety complaints from the provincial branch of the union.

Nxesi had responded to allegations of non-compliance of safety measures in various workplaces as claimed by Nehawu. The minister had met with Nehawu on August 22 as discussions were held on issues of safety, however, he said that the allegations by the union “were not correct”.

In a statement on Friday, Nehawu said it was “shocked” and “disappointed” with the baseless and unfounded allegations made by Nxesi.

The provincial union argued it referred 11 cases to the department of employment and labour to the provincial chief Inspectorate Office on the matter according to its records.

“It must be noted that in all these cases the department acknowledged receipt of such referrals, and only responded to two cases, for MEGA which was responded to on the 06th August 2020 and for Ermelo Hospital which was responded to on the 23rd September 2020 just a few hours after the national union had released its media statement.

“This, therefore, means that there is a total number of nine referrals which have not been responded to by the department, despite the follow-ups made by Nehawu in the province.”

Nehawu said it was still waiting for the outcomes of the investigations conducted at the institutions as per its referral.

“We are prepared to provide the minister with our report in this regard.”

The provincial union further said that Nxesi’s claims that there were no complaints received from Nehawu Mpumalanga were misleading.

“As such, they are a clear indication that Minister Nxesi does not have a clue of what is happening within his department, especially in Mpumalanga province.

“We want to advise Minister Nxesi that in the near future he needs to do some thorough research on what is happening in his department before making such unfounded allegations, this will include consulting Nehawu leadership to get more facts on issues.”

(Compiled by Molefe Seeletsa)

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