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The Department of Employment & Labour has announced the "Destroyed, Affected or Looted Workplaces Temporary Relief Scheme".

The COSATU-affiliated Southern African Clothing & Textile Workers' Union (SACTWU) welcomes this development. 

It will bring much relief to thousands of clothing, textile, leather, footwear (CTFL) and other workers and their families, who have lost millions of rands in wages and social benefits, due to the unacceptable conduct of those who had caused the recent burning and looting of factories in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Gauteng Province.

In terms of the new Scheme, affected workers will be able to access special funds support from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF).

It is instructive that workers now have to fund themselves (since UIF funds are actually workers' own monies) to somehow mitigate the loss of wages which had resulted from the destructive actions of some citizens.

SACTWU has tracked 51 factories and associate businesses in our industry pipeline, employing thousands of workers from the poorest communities in our country, which had been either totally or partially destroyed in consequence of the looting.

Our most serious concern remains the threat of permanent job losses and industrial capacity destruction, which might now result,  in the context of a country which is already burdened by a triple crisis of extremely high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment. 

This new UIF support Scheme will provide much needed loss-of-wages relief to affected workers, while we implement other elements of our internally recently developed CTFL Reconstruction & Recovery Plan for the affected factories and other related workplaces.

We thank our Federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) for its tireless efforts to help bring this UIF support facility to a conclusion. 

We call on the UIF administration to ensure that the tools for application and disbursement of these support funds are now put into effect as soon as possible. The UIF Head Office must  do its utmost best to prevent a recurrence of all the problems which had occurred during last year's COVID-19 TERS  processes. 

We caution employers not to opportunistically abuse this crisis by attempting to introduce employment contract downward variation provisions, as and when workers return to work.

We have also taken note of the recent announcement by the Department of Trade, Industry & Competition of additional industrial reconstruction financial support, welcome it and will make a seperate pronouncement regarding it later this coming week. 

Issued by SACTWU