Department of Employment and Labour’s Deputy Director: Employment Equity, Niresh Singh, has told an Employment Equity workshop that South Africa’s laws are about inclusivity.
Singh was addressing one of the Department’s, together with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration’s (CCMA) EE workshops, at Horseshoe Inn in Kimberley, on Wednesday.
The Department and CCMA 2023 Employment Equity national workshops are held under the theme: “Real transformation makes business sense”.
“It is not true that the Department wants to exclude Whites, Indians or Coloureds. Our laws are about including all the people,” Singh said.
In presenting the 2023 EE Report, Singh highlighted the distortion revealed by the statistics where Whites with a national economically active population(EAP) of eight percent occupy 62.9 percent of top management whereas Africans with a national EAP of 80 percent only occupy 16.9 percent of top management.
Singh told the gathering that the department does not in any way condone overrepresentation of any group.
“What we are saying is ‘take the EAP into consideration’. We do not want to exclude anyone,” he said.
He told the meeting that the distortion has been there since 1998 when the Employment Equity Act was enacted, resulting in no change or the change being negligible. Singh said this necessitated a change in dealing with equity in the workplace, hence the Sector Targets coming into the equation.
Singh stressed the differences between the Quotas and Sector targets. He said quotas are inflexible whereas targets are flexible.
“With targets, the designated employers still maintain power to consult employees and self-regulate their annual EE targets toward achieving the 5-year sector EE target which is now regulated by the Minister. Where employers fail to achieve their own annual EE targets – the law permits them to raise a justifiable ground or reason for non-compliance and a certificate of compliance will be issued to the employer – section 53(6) of EE Amendment Act,” he said.
Meanwhile, CCMA Commissioner Lucky Moloi dealt with case law on employment equity related matters. He took the workshop through several cases stressing several mistakes and errors employers and employees do which lead to losing cases.
In a quest to move away from the laborious manual reporting, the Department’s Acting Deputy Director, Innocent Makwarela, took the workshop through the EE Online reporting system. He reminded the attendees that both Manual and Online reporting will open on 1 September 2023, with the manual reporting closing on 02 October 2023 and Online reporting closing on 15 January 2024.
The EE workshops are targeted at Employers or Heads of organisations, Academics, Assigned Senior Managers, Consultative forum members, Human Resource Practitioners, Trade Unions, employees and other interested stakeholders.
The national series workshops/roadshows which started on 18 July 2023, will end on 29 August 2023.
The remaining July programme of workshops is as follows:
North West
· Lichtenburg (25 July 2023) – (Scotts Manor Guest House – 21 Bree Street, Retiefs Park)
· Rustenburg (26 July 2023) – (Orion Hotel – 115 Hagia Sophia Drive, Kloof)
KwaZulu-Natal
· Pietermaritzburg (25 July 2023) – Ascot Wedding & Conference Venue, 210 Woodhouse Road, Scottsville)