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South Africa: A Reflection on the Ratification Process by Myrtle Witbooi

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by IDWFED published Mar 10, 2012 12:00 AM
Contributors: Myrtle Witbooi
We have had several meetings in South Africa with our labour caucus, including our Portfolio Committee on Labour, Minister of Labour and some of our political parties. They all support that the Government must ratify convention 189. We all were so exited we could not wait.

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SOUTH AFRICA -

By Myrtle Witbooi, General Secretary, SADSAWU; and Chair, IDWN.

We have had several meetings in South Africa with our labour caucus, including our Portfolio Committee on Labour, Minister of Labour and some of our political parties. They all support that the Government must ratify convention 189. We all were so exited we could not wait.

Then this year, the 24th February, we had a meeting with the Portfolio Committee on Labour and we then decided to ask all the relevant questions and we got for the first time honest answers that made us to think clearly on what is our role to get government to sign.

  1. The Labour Department will take our own laws and Convention 189 together and look at all the loopholes and gaps;
  2. Then they will take the missing clauses and discuss it on how they can slot it into our legislation, for example, regarding health and safety, compensation and the bargaining council which are missing.

The convention 189 and our current legislation are now at the legal experts. When they are done, they will be sent back to the Portfolio Committee on Labour. We will be getting the provident fund, the compensation act and health and safety act as they are now in discussion. We are hoping to have some results in April 2012.

After our long discussion with our Portfolio Committee on Labour, I am sure we know what we need to do and what is our next step, that is: we want a convention that will be implemented not signed for the sake of it. In many African countries, there is not even proper legislation for domestic workers. Therefore as we demand for ratification, we must at the same time, tell our governments what we domestic workers are exactly asking for. Then our governments must make laws and legislations at the same time.

Secondly our governments have taken too long in moving their steps. So far, there is not even one ratification in the whole world! We must come up with a plan to act together.

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