St Mungo’s revives its employment bureau

St Mungo’s United Church in Bryanston hopes to revive its employment bureau as job seekers continue to face the brunt of the lockdown.

According to the bureau’s Heather Garrett, while the employee and job seeker processes have changed, the bureau remains committed to helping out the community.

“The employment bureau is now open at St Mungo’s on Tuesday mornings for employers only, from 9am to 11am. We can assist employers who are looking for domestic workers, childminders, caregivers, gardeners, drivers, painters, office workers, etc,” she said.

Employers will be given a list of potential job seekers that best match their criteria and the employers can then arrange for interviews at a time and place that is convenient for them.

Job seekers can now come to the church on any day to collect and fill out an application form which they must drop off in the post box outside of the church together with their relevant documentation, such as a copy of their identity or passport document and references.

Garrett added that the group had to change the way it received and processed applications because last year, on any given day, there were sometimes 100 to 200 job seekers at the church at one time. “At the beginning of the year, we had to turn away many people due to Covid-19 restrictions. We can’t control numbers or have a massive amount of people at the gate because then that defeats the whole purpose of Covid-19 restrictions.”

She noted that the bureau had thought about the option of allowing job seekers to pre-register online but the reality was that not many people have access to a computer or the Internet. “That is why we have chosen to go this route, at the moment we have a paper system and our job seekers understand it, they are comfortable with it and it works well.”

If job seekers are unable to find a job within the first three months of dropping off their application, they can come back after that time period. “There is a returning form that they can fill out. It also helps that not that many people are crowded at the church each week and it also saves them on transport money.”

She said while the response from the job seekers had been tremendous, there were simply not enough employers coming to the table. “Coming into the New Year the response has been quite slow, not many employers have been coming in. We have dozens of employees especially now because of the pandemic.”

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