Publications
Partners
The labour department may have threatened to name and shame employers who fail to comply with the national minimum wage, but its own systems have been found lacking.
A coalition of non-profit organisations ranging from shelters for abused women to organisations providing post-rape and other related care and residential facilities for older persons and people with disabilities raised concerns in a letter to the minister of labour Mildred Oliphant about problems they are experiencing with the online exemption system.
Many non-profit organisations in the welfare sector face severe funding challenges that make it difficult to comply with the national minimum wage. When concerns were raised during the public participation process in Parliament that a minimum wage may cripple smaller non-profit organisations in the welfare sector, the department held the exemption process as a measure, albeit temporary, to address this.
Read: Minimum wage bill is ‘a crisis for non-profit sector, women and children’
According to the National Minimum Wage Act which came into effect on January 1, employers can apply for exemption from the national minimum wage. Now, however, various non-profit organisations across the country have trouble accessing the online exemption system.
The Shukumisa Coalition representing staff at over 2000 non-profit organisations in a letter to the minister said many non-profit organisations countrywide were unable to apply for exemption due to “incompatibilities between the department of labour and department of social development’s IT systems”.
“This matter needs to be attended to urgently, and constitutes a crisis for non-profit organisations and service beneficiaries,” the letter reads.
The coalition also warned the minister that this may have dire consequences for providing ongoing services to those in need.
Chief director of labour relations in the department, Thembinkosi Mkalipi, acknowledged the challenges with the system and said the issues were being attended to. According to Mkalipi the department thus far received about 16 applications from non-profit organisations.
He explained: “The difficulty however was that when they enter their non-profit organisation number, they need to add the word ‘NPO’ at the end.”
He said the system would now be changed to explain this. Mkalipi said that because the department of labour’s integrated central database was not interfaced with the IT system at the Department of Social Development, the data will have to be uploaded manually to the database.
Despite these assurances the coalition notes the situation causes fear among organisations that they will be fined or labelled non-compliant by departments that subsidise them and that services to the most vulnerable will thus be at risk. These non-profit organisations also need copies of their exemption applications to consult with their staff. According to the coalition many of these organisations have already been summoned to the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration.
Director of PE Mental Health, Limeez Arendse, said that her organisation has been trying since January to access the online system to no avail.
“When we tried in January the website could not recognise our NPO number. We are now being assisted by an employer’s organisation, but the system still remains dysfunctional.”
Coordinator for Cheshire Homes in the Eastern Cape, Hillary Bolton, was more fortunate. Cheshire homes provide residential facilities and special daycare for people with disabilities. Bolton told Parlybeat that, after numerous failed attempts to access the online exemption system, she finally managed to submit her application, albeit after more than a month of trying. “At first the system would not accept our NPO number so one could just get up to a certain point and then had to give up. It was quite tedious.” Bolton said non-profit organisations’ struggles are much bigger than just getting an exemption.
“An exemption only gives us a 10% reduction. It is hardly the solution to our funding issues. In our case we will need R34 000 a month for one home to comply with minimum wage. We only get 23% of what we need from the department of social development and the rest we must fundraise ourselves. This [national minimum wage] poses an enormous challenge for non-profit organisations like us given our funding problems. People deserve a minimum wage but if we are to provide these services in partnership with the government, we must be funded properly.”
In his budget speech, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni announced additional funds of R1 billion to the health budget to raise the wages of community healthcare workers in line with the minimum wage of R3500.
Shukumisa welcomed this in a statement but voiced disappointment over the lack of a similar commitment for social welfare services, that according to it, were seriously underfunded.
• This article originally appeared on ParlyBeat, a biweekly digital newsletter aimed at linking policy and oversight processes in Parliament to the lived realities of ordinary people. Follow ParlyBeat on Twitter.
