BHEKI NTSHALINTSHALI: Business must accept that ensuring workers’ safety is inviolable
If taxpayers’ money is going to be used to help businesses, those firms need to agree to a moratorium on retrenchments, writes Bheki Ntshalintshali
At the beginning of the year no-one in SA, or the world, could have predicted the challenges we would face in 2020. We were all caught unawares and unprepared for the outbreak of Covid-19. Over the past three months, we have all been trying to stop the spread of the virus, which is unlike anything we have seen before. The reports from Europe and the US have been alarming, with significant levels of mortality and the inability of well-developed states to cope.
This is worrying for SA given our pre-existing health challenges, the poor state of public healthcare institutions and the unaffordability of private healthcare for the majority. Workers in SA and the world have been the most heavily affected. This is a reflection on the poverty wages workers are paid, high levels of inequality, a lack of access to decent healthcare, the lack of nutrition and extreme overcrowding in most townships...
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