LETTER: How far along is labour ministry in meeting its goals?

The SA president and the employment and labour minister Thulas Nxesi signed a performance agreement binding the minister to achieve particular goals between June 2019 and April 2024. As we are now getting close to April 2023, it is important to see exactly where the labour ministry is, and whether it is able to take any action to try to perform in accordance with that agreement. 

It would be useful for the ministry to take cognisance of where it has not performed thus far, and to assess the previous three years. It is also important for us to understand that Covid-19 was a negative factor in SA and the whole world. Bearing these negatives in mind, it is still important to do an assessment. Many of the interventions and indicators in this performance agreement costs the ministry nothing, and issues such as the development of employment policies need not have been put on hold during the unnecessary lockdown.

For instance, the intervention agreed upon was to “create an enabling environment for employment through policy and regulations”.  The indicator was “employment policy developed, consult, piloted and implemented”.  This intervention and indicator could easily have been developed in a couple of months.  We all fully understand that consultation is time-consuming, but it certainly didn’t require three years.  Unfortunately, nothing was done during the past three years. 

Only now, in his recent state of the nation address (Sona) did the president announce that we still need to develop and implement employment policy and align this with the priorities of labour migration policies for the employment of foreign nationals in SA.  With only a year to go, it appears that this vital intervention has been neglected for more than three years. 

It must also be said that way back during Nelson Mandela’s presidency we had similar promises and little to no delivery over the past 25 years. It also needs to be said that there was demand for skills planning to support growth. We were supposed to have a skills priority plan developed by now. In fact, it should have been developed by end-December 2020 and be aligned with the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative. Once again, we have seen nothing since June 2019.

Almost pathetically, the president agreed with the minister that they would implement the Employment Equity Act to eliminate gender and race wage disparities using inspections. Now it appears even the presidential advisers have recognised that the act is hindering small business, and are calling for small businesses to be exempt from many of the sections of the law.

Women, youths and persons with disabilities were supposed to benefit from preferential procurement, with a target of at least 7% for the disabled. This has certainly not happened, and even within the government sector employment of persons with disabilities is less than 1%.

The president and employment and labour minister need to reread that performance agreement and refresh their minds before judgment day in April 2024.

Michael Bagraim, MP
DA labour spokesperson

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