NEHAWU North West welcomes provincial government reshuffling
7 December 2018
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] in the North West Provinces notes and welcomes the bold step, although delayed, by the North West Premier, Prof. Job Mokgoro in reshuffling the Provincial cabinet.
As NEHAWU, we welcome these long awaited changes and we hope they will salvage the Provincial Government from the state of paralysis that has engulfed the Province for the past couple of years. Moving forward, we hope that this reshuffling of the Provincial Government will inspire demoralized workers and the electorate at large in the Province.
We are, however, disappointed that there is no change in the Department of Culture, Arts and Traditional Affairs [CATA]. This is a department that has failed in ensuring stability in the much troubled Mmabana Foundation. The Office of the Premier ought to know that workers in this institution are neglected; harassed and now of late undermined and insulted by the so called Administrative Authority imposed on this institution. It is against this background that we call upon the Premier to therefore take it upon himself to intervene in this parastatal by adhering to our request to meet and discuss this institution and other related matters.
We take this opportunity to welcome all newly appointed MECs and pledge our full support especially for purposes of resolving the long standing workers issues in the Province. Similarly, we want to issue out a warning that NEHAWU has never been a friend and will not begin now being a friend to stubborn Government deployees who are hell-bent in undermining workers and their rights. As we welcome the Comrades deployed, they surely know the amount of unhappiness in the public service and we shall be making a call for bilateral meetings and we expect nothing less than a speedy resolution of our issues.
Fortunately, these are the Comrades who understands how Government ended up being engulfed into a plethora of challenges and they have advocated against attempts to establish a parallel Government through introduction of casualization; labour brokering and looting of the state. We don’t expect the same from them and we demand immediate change for the better.
Filling of the 10 000 vacancies in the Public Service has in our view became an urgent matter for us. We can’t struggle to reduce the stubbornly high percentage of unemployment in the province yet have a government that has withheld filling of over 10 000 vacancies in Government departments. We wish all newly appointed MEC’s well in their duties, 2019 is the year of elections and we hope they will act accordingly in inspiring hope to workers and the electorate by presenting a fresh breeze of Government that is able to deliver to its workers and the poor communities of the North West Province.
We particularly welcome the new MEC of the troubled Health Department and the Provincial Secretary of the working class vanguard, Cde. Sambatha Madoda. We will surely offer our support to him like we have done to all the others but we will not hold back punches when our issues are not resolved. Our demand of the removal of the HOD of Health Department still stands and so are many of our demands.
Equally, we welcome the second coming of MEC Fenny Gaolaolwe to the troubled Social Development, she is not new to challenges of this Department, in fact she left without resolving them and we expect her to bring bold leadership and provide dignity to our Social Workers and all workers of this Department. The fact that these workers do not have dignified office space across the Province remains a serious challenge and we expect government to resolve these challenges immediately and anything less than that amounts to failure.
Congratulations to all and we expect nothing less than the same bold leadership demonstrated by the Premier to all the MECs that in Government henceforth.
Issued by Patrick Makhafane, North West Provincial Secretary, NEHAWU, 7 December 2018
