South African civil service ‘return to work’ drive sparks safety fears
The South African government has asked many civil servants to return to work, sparking criticism from the Public Servants Association (PSA) union – which warns that plans for ensuring health and safety in the workplace have not been fully implemented.
The country’s public service and administration minister, Senzo Mchunu, announced on 8 May that more government employees would need to return to the workplace “to facilitate the unlocking of the economy” and to provide services “over and above other basic services that were part of the critical and essential services during the lockdown period”. He said the government would be developing plans to enable civil servants to return to work safely, which so far include departments setting up internal COVID-19 Steering Committees to ensure service delivery while protecting staff and staggering civil servants’ arrival at offices and lunchbreaks.
However, the PSA – a union representing around 240,000 public servants – noted that many government employees had returned to the workplace prior to Mchunu’s address, and said that some protective measures are not yet in place. “The minister was surely aware that a vast number of public servants have already, since 4 May 2020, been recalled, reporting for duty [at] various departments and agencies,” the PSA said in a statement, as reported by the African News Agency. The union claims that staff have been recalled despite there being a lack of personal protection equipment (PPE) and a lack of measures to screen employees or ensure the deep cleaning of offices.
“[Mchunu’s] acknowledgement is late, and preparations should have been made before employees were recalled. The PSA is aware that many public servants were already recalled to the workplace and in some instances sent back [to work from home], thereby causing unnecessary and further exposure to the virus,” the PSA said. It added that it “would not allow its members to be exposed to dangerous working conditions unnecessarily”.
Public unable to access vital services
It noted that there have been instances where department buildings had reopened and then closed again because they were found to be failing to comply with the government’s ‘return to work’ regulations, and that such instances had left the “general public frustrated because they are unable to access vital services”.
For example, several Home Affairs offices – in Gauteng, the Western Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo – have been shut by the Department of Labour because they did not comply with safety measures designed to protect staff and citizens, such as the installation of protective glass partitions. According to reports, the Home Affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi rejects the labour department’s reasoning. He said partitions would take months to install but that staff have been given face screens and gloves, and added that the Home Affairs department had appealed the Department of Labour’s decision and is now considering legal action.
In its statement, the PSA said that each department applied and interpreted regulations differently and that this risked exposing employees and members of the public to the virus. It strongly advised Mchunu to ensure that public servants did not return to the workplace without having the necessary equipment and safety measures in place, and that all workplaces complied with the COVID-19 regulations and the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
About Mia Hunt
Mia has been editor of globalgovernmentforum.com since 2019. She has 15 years’ experience as a journalist and editor and specialises in writing for civil and public servants worldwide, including covering sustainability policy and related issues. She has led the Global Government Women’s Network since it launched in 2023. Previously, she covered commercial property having been market reports and supplements editor at Property Week and deputy editor at Retail Destination. She graduated from Kingston University London with a first-class honours degree in journalism and was part of the team that produced The River newspaper, which won Publication of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards in 2010.
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