Nehawu Free State Legislature Branch

11/06/2021

Picketing at Free State Legislature

14/07/2020

NEHAWU SUPPORTS SADTU IN CALLING FOR SCHOOLS TO CLOSE UNTIL COVID-19 PEAK PASSES

Tuesday July 14, 2020

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] supports its sister union and reliable ally in the terrain of struggle, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union [SADTU], in calling for schools to close until the COVID-19 peak passes.

The national union holds a strong view that schools should reopen in September because temperatures would have risen by that time of the year and infections would decrease as the virus is said to be less of a threat in warm conditions. The increasing number of leaners and teachers who are getting infected with the virus is a serious cause for concern and the start of the winter season including the recent spike in transmissions in the country necessitates that stringent measures are put in place to protect lives. Even before the peak, the Department of Basic Education [DBE] was failing to put measures in place to protect learners and teachers. For example, twenty three days after schools were reopened more than 180 pupils at the Makaula Senior Secondary School in Mount Frere in the Eastern Cape tested positive for Covid-19.

Many schools have been complaining about late delivery of Personal Protective Equipment [PPE], poor quality of PPEs in most schools, no PPEs for non-teaching staff, dilapidated classrooms while some rural schools still have no proper toilets and scarce water supplies for washing of hands. The peak of the virus is only going to exacerbate these problems which will lead to loss of innocent lives. The World Health Organisation [WHO] has also warned against the reopening of schools while local transmissions of the coronavirus are on the rise.

While schools are closed the department will have ample time to get its house in order. We support the call by our sister union for the department to look at other avenues including interactive radio lessons, educational television programmes, provision of infrastructure and gadgets for online learning. Parents have a role to play too as they still have to assist learners with their schools work and ensure that their children don’t have a lull in terms of learning.

NEHAWU calls on the department to listen to reason as the continuation of schooling will only result in calamity. Our healthcare system is already overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases and in order to unburden it we need to stop transmissions by any means necessary.

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

27/06/2020

NEHAWU STATEMENT ON THE SUPPLEMENTARY BUDGET

Thursday June 25, 2020

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] notes the Supplementary Budget presented by the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, in terms of the Public Finance Management Act, the Money Bills and Related Matters Act.

The tabling of this Supplementary Budget takes place against the background of the release of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey on the 23rd June 2020 by Statistics South Africa. Accordingly, total unemployment rate [the so-called expanded unemployment] was already almost 40% by the first quarter of 2020. This signifies the already unfolding catastrophic socioeconomic crises facing poor households in our population, 10.8 million of which were already unemployed before the implementation of the lockdown measures according to the declaration of the National State of Disaster in response to the Coronavirus epidemic since the second quarter.

As NEHAWU, whilst taking into account the broader fiscal response to the immediate crisis of COVID-19, we are nonetheless disappointed in the fact that this Supplementary Budget largely comprises reallocations across spheres and programmes, in which only about R38 billion is new and additional money. This is despite the fact that we are facing a disastrous over 7% GDP contraction in the current financial year and the fact that other peer countries are taking far more decisive macroeconomic measures to avert economic collapse.

There have been a range of measures proposed by our federation to stimulate economic growth, which have been ignored in the Supplementary Budget. Amongst others, these include the question of the prescribed assets to secure impact investments from the more than 6 trillion rands in pension savings and the implementation of the Government Employees Housing Scheme to stimulate the labour intensive construction sector and to address our members’ pressing demands.

Contrary to the rhetorical claims about the “binging mouth of the hippopotamus” that is causing the debt predicament, the fact is that since 2015 year after year Treasury has announced additional austerity measures in the budgets, to cut spending, hence between 2014 and 2019 non-interest expenditure only grew by 1, 6%. As a consequence, amidst the unfolding public health emergency caused by COVID-19, we have unprecedented rates of vacancies in the coalface sites of public services, including the frontline public healthcare, education, social development, safety and security.

Frontline workers are still facing the grim prospects of being infected by the Coronavirus due to the inadequate supply of the Personal Protective Equipment [PPEs] and the failure by government as an employer to comply with the Occupational Health and Safety Act. In our view, this Treasury’s austerity programme is largely responsible for undermining the country’s fight against the COVID-19 epidemic as more frontline worker are claimed by this contagion.

These sustained budgetary cuts since the fifth administration were however accompanied by massive haemorrhaging of fiscal resources through outsourcing contracts, corruption, mismanagement of SOEs and other agencies, excessive use of consultants, etc. The Zondo Commission has highlighted some of these channels through which the state’s resources have been looted, whilst the last report of the Auditor General South Africa, Kimi Makwetu, highlighted the deteriorating financial management across government and SOEs.

Once again, none of these drivers of the widening budget-deficit and public-debt have been mentioned in the Treasury’s efforts to stabilise public debt at 87.4% of GDP in 2023/24 and in pursuit of the unrealistic fiscal target of a primary budget surplus within three years. Instead, the Treasury continues to single-out government workers under the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council [PSCBC] and now NEHAWU and other Congress of South African Unions [COSATU] unions are forced to defend collective bargaining from attacks by the African National Congress [ANC] government, to ensure that the 2018 PSCBC agreement is honoured.

We note that Treasury says that “Cabinet has reiterated support for the proposed public-service wage bill reductions announced in February”. As NEHAWU, we can guarantee Treasury that we shall spare no effort and leave no stone unturned in defence of the interests of our members, including in waging a fight to ensure that the 2020 salary adjustments are implemented with back-pay from April.

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

19/06/2020

May the revolutionary spirit of Cde Jasenta rest in peace.

16/06/2020

22/04/2020

NEHAWU RESPONSE TO THE STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT CYRIL RAMAPHOSA ON FURTHER ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MEASURES IN RESPONSE THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC

Wednesday April 22, 2020

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) notes the economic and social measures announced by President Ramaphosa to the nation last night.

The impact of the combined global capitalist crisis and COVID-19 pandemic is likely to plunge all regions, including Africa, into recession as forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the last few months since the outbreak of COVID-19 the developing economies, including South Africa, have witnessed massive capital outflows.

In South Africa, we are in a worse predicament as our economy was already pushed into a technical recession when the Coronavirus outbreak was announced. This is the third technical recession since the start of the implementation of the misguided austerity programme in 2015 - that has failed to achieve its targets in terms of reducing the budget-deficit and public-debt. The Treasury’s current Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) announced during the Budget Speech by Tito Mboweni disgracefully departed from the macroeconomic framework outlined in the 2019 ANC election manifesto.

With deep fiscal cuts particularly singling-out the public service workers under the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) and other social cuts such as in public railway transport, Mboweni MTEF was destined to plunge the economy to even deeper depths of recession – and thus creating yet another round of a vicious cycle of economic contraction, followed by revenue shortfalls and then more borrowing at rising premium. In the event, the price of this austerity programme was the junk-status downgrade of the country’s sovereign rating by Moody’s, which effectively put paid to the Treasury’s MTEF.

We are disappointed and underwhelmed by the timid stimulation package announced by the President which falls short relative to the necessary amount required for employment-creating and robust positive GDP growth rate. This is on top of the government’s failure to reverse its decision to disrespect and renege on the 2018 public service wage agreement, which is a frontal attack on the hard won gains of workers, particularly those who continue to make sacrifices providing front-line services to our people in saving lives, delivering essential services and enforcing law and order. It is rather bizarre to seek to stimulate the economic growth through borrowing from the (IMF) and some budget reallocations on the one hand, whilst continuing to do the opposite in cutting the public sector wage bill. This can only serve to depress the township and rural economies as many public servants rent accommodation in townships due to their exclusion from housing mortgage lending by the banks. In this regard, we call on the Minister of Finance to prioritise the issue of the payment of salary increases for frontline workers who are busy fight the pandemic when he revises the budget and he must reverse the decision to cut the public service wage bill with immediate effect.

The immediately implementation of the pension-backed Government Employee Housing Scheme would create more than half million new home owners without any additional borrowing by government and a concrete catalyst for the revival of the labour-intensive construction sector. Simultaneously this would have induced other multiplier-effects or spin-offs in the interconnected sectors.

It is strange that amidst massive capital outflows out of emerging economies and South Africa in particular, government and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) fails to impose capital controls to stem the unfolding devaluation of the domestic assets. We note the increases in the public health expenditure, but unfortunately this is still inadequate given the persisting disparities in terms of the clinical personnel, beds, medical devises and other infrastructure compared to the private health sector. The South African public health system has been neglected for many decades, such that massive resources are still needed if we are to accelerate the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI).

The multiple crises we face as a country require innovative, bold, decisive and courageous stance on the part of our government. Unfortunately, the persistent religious adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy, even in the face of such an unprecedented scale of socioeconomic catastrophe, represents a missed opportunity in spiking up the economic growth curve whilst driving the flattening the Coronavirus curve.

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

17/03/2020

MEDIA STATEMENT - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEHAWU CALLS ON OUR GOVERNMENT TO PROCURE THE DRUG INTERFERON FROM CUBA FOR THE TREATMENT OF COVID-19
Tuesday March 17, 2019
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] calls on our government and the Department of Health to procure Interferon from the Cuban government to treat those infected with COVID-19.
The Cuban pharmaceutical industry gave a guarantee on Saturday [14th March 2020] that the production of the 22 drugs used for the treatment of COVID-19 including Interferon Alpha 2B has been proven to be very effective in fighting the virus. BioCubaFarma which produces the drug has been supplying the drug to many countries that have realised the effectiveness of the drug hence we appeal to our government to procure it from the Cuban government.
Interferon is currently being used in vulnerable and health care personnel as a preventative measure, as well as in patients with COVID-19 in the form of a nebulisation which is a quicker route to reach the lungs and acts in the early stages of the infection. So far Interferon has cured more than 1500 patients from the virus and has been used by the Chinese National Health Commission to combat respiratory diseases.
Cuba has always been at the forefront of medical innovation even with the illegal economic embargo by the United States of America [USA] in place. NEHAWU has always been an ardent admirer of the Cuban healthcare system which prioritises prevention rather than curing.
The Cuban people continue to be selfless in their contribution to building a healthy world including the training of our future doctors through the Mandela-Castro initiative. Cuban doctors have played a pivotal role in combating the spread of the virus in China and other high risk areas.
NEHAWU will engage the Minister of Health and Government to procure the drug with immediate effect.
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

26/02/2020

NEHAWU RESPONSE TO THE 2020/21 NATIONAL BUDGET

Wednesday February 26, 2020

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] notes the tabling of the 2020/21 National Budget before parliament today, 26th February 2020, by the Minister of Finance.

The country is facing one of the worst economic crisis in the post-apartheid dispensation, unemployment is at record high, accompanied by high levels of poverty and social inequality. Mining, Agriculture, Manufacturing sectors of the economy continue to shed massive jobs.

The economy remains in a low growth trap while state owned enterprises are in a state of collapse. Socioeconomic condition of the working class and the poor are worsening on a daily basis and retrenchments are the order of the day. As NEHAWU, we were expecting a national budget that would give hope to the hopeless masses of our people.

Unfortunately, and regrettably the Minister of Finance has made the situation worse with his reckless inciting frontal attack on the hard worn gains of workers. Instead of tabling an inspiring budget that is pro-poor the Minister presented a reactionary, conservative neo-liberal anti-poor budget which makes the misery of our people a joke.

Wage Bill

We note that, “The 2020 Budget proposes a reduction in the compensation budgets of national and provincial departments, and entities that receive transfers directly from national government. These reductions amount to R37.8 billion in 2020/21, R54.9 billion in 2021/22 and R67.5 billion in 2022/23”. NEHAWU would like to state that what the Treasury is proposing constitute a frontal attack on the gains of workers, and we view this as a reckless, unnecessary provocation which may lead to the collapse of the public service.

We call on the President of the Republic to take action against Minister Mboweni because he has gone rogue this time in trying to please Rating Agencies at the expense of workers and the poor. NEHAWU will never allow what has been won democratically by workers to be taken by authoritarian and undemocratic means. We stick with our position that wage agreements reached by parties in the bargaining council remain sacrosanct. Anyone who undermines workers gains must also be prepared to face the wrath of our members.

We remain opposed to the notion that workers must carry the burden of social adjustment, for the economic crisis they have not created. In this regard, we will gallantly defend our members and workers’ jobs. Therefore, we call on government to curb corruption and wasteful expenditure to unburden the fiscus.

Austerity measures

We are deeply annoyed and concerned by the new tendency of reducing budgets in critical services and infrastructure allocation, such as the ones we list below:

· Allocations to the human settlements sector are reduced by R14.6 billion over the MTEF period, implying fewer subsidy houses, serviced sites and related bulk and connector infrastructure;

· The municipal infrastructure grant is reduced by R2.8 billion over the same period, slowing provision of infrastructure such as water and electricity connections to poor households.

· Public transport spending is reduced by R13.2 billion over the next three years, mainly on allocations to the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa and the public transport network grant;

· Reductions in basic and higher education infrastructure allocations amount to R5.2 billion over the medium term;

These austerity measures goes against the quest to build an effective, capable, developmental state. By their very nature they add more burden to workers and communities, they are anti-ANC led progressive agenda of social cohesion and nation building.

We are deeply concern by the fact that there is silence on taxing the rich in a form of wealth tax. With growing illicit capital outflows and tax avoidance we find it unacceptable that the Minister has been quite on capital controls.

We welcome measures to rebuild our tax and revenue collection capacity and the work underway to tackle corruption and malfeasant in our institutions in particular SARS.

Expenditure Framework:

NEHAWU welcomes the fact that 55,4 percent of the budget is allocated to learning and culture, health and social development, this is in line with the long standing commitment of the ANC Led government to heal the historical injustices of the past.

Post-School education and training

We welcome government’s commitment to the medium-term focus in this sector which will expand access to universities and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges, improve their performance, develop artisans, support work based learning, and strengthen the management and governance of community education and training colleges.

We applaud government commitment to increase the National Student Financial Aid Scheme from R33 billion 2019/20 to R40.8 billion in 2022/23.

Health

NEHAWU and all progressive forces in the health sector welcomes the announcement that government over the medium term, will reprioritize R55.6 million to the Department of Health to strengthen its capacity to phase in NHI, this is long overdue, nonetheless we support the effort.

We applaud government for allocating R3,3 billion for to ensure that there is sufficient medical internships.

Sovereign Wealth Fund and State-Bank

We welcome the announcement of the establishment of the Sovereign Wealth Fund today by the Minister. This is in line with many resolutions of the ANC that have been adopted by successive congresses and supported by all Alliance partners.

We call on government to move quickly and with urgency in implementing the establishment of this fund. NEHAWU will wait for the tabling of the bill that establish the fund.

In conclusion, we would like to assure members and the public that we will fight tooth and nail the undemocratic attacks on the hard warn gains of our members. We call upon the President of the Republic to call Mr Mboweni to order. This unrepentant apologist of failed neoliberal project who has gone rogue is causing unnecessary divisions, havoc and panic in our society. We, therefore, ask the question to the President of the Republic as to whether it is not time for Mr Mboweni to be released of his responsibilities because he is acting horribly irresponsible.

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

26/02/2020

𝗡𝗘𝗛𝗔𝗪𝗨 𝗦𝗨𝗣𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗦 𝗖𝗢𝗦𝗔𝗧𝗨 𝗜𝗡 𝗥𝗘𝗝𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗚𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗢 𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗚𝗔𝗗𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟴 𝗣𝗨𝗕𝗟𝗜𝗖 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗩𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗔𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧

Wednesday February 26, 2020

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] joins its federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions [COSATU], in vehemently rejecting the intentions by government to renegade on the implementation of the 2018 public service wage agreement.

Yesterday, government made a proposal at the first Council meeting of the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council [PSCBC] to review the agreement because they can no longer afford to pay the 2020 salary increase. Government tabled an agenda item titled “Management of the Public Service Wage Bill” which basically means that they intend to review the PSCBC Resolution 1 of 2018 clause 3.3 which deals with the implementation of salary increases for public servants who are in the scope of the PSCBC.

NEHAWU has already made it unequivocally clear that the current wage agreements are sacrosanct and not open for review. We view any intention to review the 2018 agreement as a declaration of war. The national union will not enter into any discussion that seeks to take away what workers have gallantly fought for and reverse their gains. We hold a strong view that workers are punished for sins not of their making and we will not fold our arms while government insists on using workers as scapegoats for their failures to run a tight ship.

The national union has noted over a long period of time the consistent firmness by Treasury to reserve the gains of workers including wage freezes, cutting of benefits and cutting of jobs as part of rolling implementation of austerity measures meant to fix problems in the fiscus. We find it disturbing that every time when there are problems in the fiscus workers must face the brunt while government fails to curb all forms of irregular, wasteful, fruitless expenditure and material irregularities.

We find it both reckless and inciting that government expects unions to inform members in a mere space of twenty working days about their intentions not to pay the impending salary increase. In this regard, we hope that the Minister of Finance during his budget speech later today will not announce the freezing of public service wages. If he does announce wage freezing then we will be left with no option but to mobilise all our members and workers to shut down government indefinitely and render the system ungovernable. Moreover, we are more than capable of mobilising society at large for a mother of all fights.

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

04/12/2019

MEDIA STATEMENT - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEHAWU REJECTS ANY PLANS BY TREASURY TO FREEZE WAGES OF PUBLIC SERVANTS
Wednesday December 04, 2019
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] notes the recent and ill-advised utterances by the Deputy Minister of Finance, David Masondo, about freezing public servant’s wages.
While addressing an investor conference in Cape Town the Deputy Minister revealed that the government was planning to freeze wages across its operations to restrain its escalating expenditure. This is not the first time that the Deputy Minister has made this threat to workers. In October the same threat was made and the Deputy Minister insisted that wages would have to be frozen if government is committed to controlling the public purse.
As NEHAWU, we vehemently reject the intended freezing of our members and workers’ wages because Treasury has so far this year spent about R128 billion trying to bail out the shambolically managed Eskom. Workers cannot suffer because of the country’s stagnant economic performance and low tax receipts.
Just last month the Auditor General revealed that irregular expenditure for the current year has increased by over R10 billion to R62.60 billion from the R 52 billion reported in the 2017/2018 financial year. However, Treasury continues to fail to take full responsibility and condemn this abuse of public funds including ensuring that those responsible are made to account. Instead workers must suffer wage freezes to fix the problems in the fiscus.
The national is going to pick a fight with Treasury and will demand that they inform the public how it is implementing the recommendations of the Auditor General. We will also demand to know why Treasury is not reducing the massive funds, growing exponentially going out to tenders and why are they not restructuring the bureaucracy of the free-loading State-Owned Enterprises [SOE’s]. We will make it unequivocally clear that they need to stop threatening the livelihoods of the workers as we will not stand idle while workers are punished for sins not of their making.
Treasury has proven beyond reasonable doubt that they do not care about our members and workers who work extra hard to ensure that services are being rendered to the public. Such nonsensical utterances dampen the spirits of our members and workers. In order to increase productivity and upsurge workers morale Treasury must desist from such inciting statement with immediate effect.
NEHAWU would like to send a clear message to Treasury that we shall never enter into any negotiations to reduce the incomes of the public service workers. As we head towards our Central Executive Committee [CEC] to be convened on the 7th and the 8th December 2019 we will consider a decision to convene a march to Parliament on the day of the delivery of the budget speech as we suspect the wage freezing will be announced then. Failure for the march to yield any positive results we will be left with no option but to mobilise all our members and workers to shut down government indefinitely and render the system ungovernable. Moreover, we are more than capable of mobilising society at large for a mother of all fights against the austerity measures by treasury.
Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat