The incidents of poor service delivery experienced by clients at the Alberton Labour Centre is the antithesis of expected behaviour by officials of the government in general and the Department of Employment and Labour in particular.

What is reported to have transpired at this particular labour centre should not have happened. Under no circumstances should clients be sent back without being assisted/helped by the staff at any one of our offices at any point in time.

“It is NOT the policy of the Department to cut queues during the official times of 07:30 to 16:00 from Mondays to Fridays. We view this allegation in a serious light and will institute an enquiry to establish the facts and where necessary, will take appropriate action against any staff member found to have been involved in this unfortunate incident,” said Tshepo Mokomatsidi, the chief director provincial operations: Gauteng.

Having said that, we must also put it on record that the closure of our Germiston Labour Centre in 2018 led to a situation in which clients who are traditionally serviced by this centre had to flock to the Alberton Labour Centre, thus leading to huge influx of clients. This is however, not an excuse nor the fact that since the onset of COVID-19 and its health and safety restrictions in 2020, all our offices in the province (Gauteng) had to operate with half of normal capacity of staff at all times. Because of the job losses that have been exacerbated by the onset of the pandemic, we find that we have high demand for our services and this has put a strain on our operations,” he continued.

In order to overcome the influx of clients at the labour centres, the Department came with different directives on how best it can assist the clients under Covid 19 restrictions. It introduced the appointment system where clients are given dates in which they can come to receive services at the labour centre.

This appointment system was augmented by a system called “One Day Service Delivery” which aimed to ensure that on the date of the appointment the client is able to leave our Labour Centres with the full knowledge of whether the application have been approved or not. This was done to minimise client traffic which could have exposed them and our officials to Covid 19.

Furthermore, the Department also came up with a directive that introduced the use of ‘Pay Sheets’ to effect payment benefits without the need for clients to come to our offices to submit payment continuation forms. It is unfortunate that some clients prefer to come in person which has an impact on queues.

The Department is committed to providing quality services to all our clients within the scope and of also adhering to the health and safety protocols to protect both clients and staff members from Covid19 and in future will work hard to ensure that such unfortunate events do not happen again.