Times Of Swaziland: COVID-19 EFFECTS: 2 645 RETRENCHED, 29 979 LAID OFF

COVID-19 EFFECTS: 2 645 RETRENCHED, 29 979 LAID OFF
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Sibusiso Zwane on 28/02/2022 08:50:00


MANZINI – A total 32 624 workers were directly affected by the outbreak of
COVID-19 in the past two years as 2 645 were retrenched and 29 979 laid off.
This is according to the office of the Labour Commissioner, which is under the
Ministry of Labour and Social Security. In terms of statistics, Deputy Labour
Commissioner, Kingdom Mamba, said between March 2020, when the country was hit
by the outbreak of COVID-19, and December 31, 2021, 29 979 employees have been
formally laid off from 261 companies that have received approval from the office
of the Labour Commissioner. Mamba said six of the approved companies had twice
applied for extensions and they were counted once in the total number of
employees affected. He added that eight of the approved companies had applied
for amendment of their initial layoff applications due to various reasons
including omission of some employees and reductions of the number of workers, to
mention a few.
Applications
He said 13 companies that applied had their applications denied and were advised
to invoke other options as provided for by both the guidelines on employment
contingency measures and the Disaster Management. “10 companies were denied in
favour of shift work, while three were denied in favour of short time,” he
said. Furthermore, Mamba said eight of the companies were advised to apply for
layoffs in terms of their Wages Regulation Order, since the layoffs were
applicable in cases such as lack of orders and raw materials. As a result, he
said 234 applications were processed and approved by December 31, 2021.
In terms of the layoffs, he explained that employers were compelled to refuse
employment under certain circumstances; shortage of raw materials, power and
finance issues were arising temporarily in the industries. He said all of the
laid  off employees were to be taken back in their usual posts, as soon as the
layoff was lifted out.  On the other hand, he said 2 645 employees out of 88
establishments were made redundant within the same period (between March 2020
and December 2021).
Terminations
He added that in 2020 a total of 889 employees were retrenched and these
included cases of mutual terminations and sale of business/takeover under
Section 33 of the Employment Act, No.5 of 1980. On another note, the deputy
labour commissioner said government had challenges regarding the outbreak of
COVID-19 pandemic, as it exposed the country on how ill-prepared it was to deal
with contingencies such as the pandemic, especially in two areas. He said one of
the arears was that there was no legal framework to manage labour space during
pandemics. “There was also lack of funds to cater for contingencies brought
about by pandemics,” Mamba said. As a result of the above identified areas, he
said government was in the process of finalising the Unemployment Benefits Fund
Bill (UBF) aimed at providing social security benefits to employees when exposed
to unemployment contingencies.
Again, he said the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Eswatini
National Provident Fund (ENPF) had provided technical and financial assistance
respectively to the development of the Unemployment Benefit Schemes, which would
be governed and regulated by the Unemployment Benefit Fund Act (currently at
Bill stage). On a positive note, Mamba said the county had recorded some
successes. He said this was because the country managed to prevent major job
losses in favour of loss of earnings. He said this was done by deferring
retrenchments in some companies which would have resulted in a large number of
permanent loss of employment of emaSwati employees. “Instead, we contained the
joblessness to only 88 companies which retrenched 2 645 employees from January
2020 to December 31, 2021,” he added. He said within the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) Region, Eswatini was the only country which
successfully prevented permanent job losses in favour of loss of earnings in
some companies.
Security
In addition, he said as a country, they had realised that their bond of security
of wages equivalent to one-month salary in terms of Section 62 of the Employment
Act, No.5 of 1980 was not enough to cater for contingencies such as COVID-19,
hence, they were about to establish Unemployment Benefit Fund schemes to cater
for unemployment contingencies.  He said the lack of legislation to deal with
the pandemic, the country was found wanting and they were in a process to enact
a law which would deal with it.