Traffic came to a standstill on Tuesday morning when members of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) protest outside the offices of the Department of Trade Industries and Competition in Pretoria.
There were a heavy present of law enforcement of SAPS and Tshwane Metro police monitoring the protest.
They protest from Nehawu offices to DTIC holding placards, singing and dancing on the street.
They are calling for overtime to be implemented as per the DTIC policy; they want the employer to also amongst others fill vacant positions, implementation of resolution 1 of 2012.
They hand over a memorandum of demand to deputy director general Sarah Choane.
They demand the department to respond their memorandum in 14 days.
Some DTIC workers left their work and joined the protest.
Speaking to branch chairperson dtic Nehawu Kenneth Bosopa said this picket is a culmination of the frustrations that has been brewing over time on the terrible working conditions that continues to deteriorate at the department and its entities due to lack of strategic direction and poor management which our members and staff in general continues to bear at the department and all its entities and our economy collapsing further.
As a union we are perturbed and flabbergasted about the conduct of the minister who continues to perpetuate this crisis and has successfully turned the dtic into a shadow of its former self.
This conduct clearly demonstrates the lack of appreciation of the role that the dtic should be playing in reviving our ailing economy and creating the much-needed jobs.
“This is public services and it govern by rules and regulation everything that to do must be govern and must be control, must be informed by policies and direction.
The Minister must fix the mess at the department.
The policy only affects the employees and management are not affected by those and they do as they please. They implement them selectively,” Bosopa said.
He said NEHAWU is calling for the resolution to be implemented in totality as it had only been partially implemented,
We demand that DG and DDGs post where interviews have been conducted be appointed with immediate effect.
We demand that all the daily, weekly reporting be abolished with immediate effect from branches that still practice this, and managers manage work and provide strategic directions.
We demand that Resolution 1 of 2012 and 1 of 2009 be implemented in totality across all the branches, the department implement the working from home policy like many of our stakeholders who are implementing it as we work together in most instances and our transit to and from the office turns to be disruptive, the central bargaining forums for all the dtic entities be re-established with immediate effect, all cases of bullying, harassment and abuse of power reported at the dtic be probed further by an independent investigators and concomitant action be taken and employer consult organised labour in good faith when embarking on Organisational redesign and reassignment national regulator for compulsory specificat.
‘We don’t know if the department has turned into a Bollywood or Nollywood because we are having so many positions of acting, and everyone is acting.
We as Nehawu we want that to come to an end and vacancy to be fill immediately,” he said.
Bosopa said we are giving the department 14 days to respond to our memorandum. We reached out to minister and deputy minister and the point that we have here is a result of failed to engagement that we had with the office of the deputy ministers.
“We are just started this is a warning shot and we are coming back with full force to push them to do the right thing because every now and then we must push them to do the right thing when its suits them they don’t do the right thing,” Bosopa said.
“We are operating under hostile environment, and we been going for over a year or two without permanent CEO.
Our current CEO has been acting for two months and his contract is ending in December, and we don’t even know what a way forward is,” National regulator for compulsory specifications Pule Mototo said.
“I heard all the issues that had been raised and we will go through all this issues but i will hand over memorandum to the minister because it is address to him, so that he will be the one responding from his side,” deputy director general Sarah Choane said.
