province, at the Employee Wellness Open Day, in Mmabatho stadium
14 November 2007
Programme director
Honourable MECs
Director-General and Heads of Department
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Our employees
It is not often that we find time to demonstrate, in practice, our
appreciation to our employees for their work and the contribution they are
making to our nation-building projects. It therefore gives me immeasurable
pleasure to be standing here in front of our employees to pay tribute to their
presence in our service and the service of the people of the North West
province and our nation. I have no doubt that I speak on behalf of all my
colleagues in government, in the provincial legislature and the municipal
councils when I say you are all valued.
Our public service is built on the ethos of Batho Pele that is placing the
interests and the welfare of our people first. In so doing we are responding to
the service aspect of our work as government employees. I must therefore begin
by paying tribute to you and the selfless service you render your fellow
citizens in your capacity as public servants. Because you earn salaries for the
work you are doing, you might underestimate the contribution and the difference
you make in the lives of the people of the North West province. Please pause,
for a minute, and take a bow. You are a source of support to your nation, and
we are proud of you.
We are gathered here today on the basis, as always, of Batho Pele. This time
around, however, we as government would like to place you, our employees, the
people's employees, first. We meet here today to affirm our commitment to you,
confirm your importance to us, and recognise your wellbeing as a critical
requirement for government's delivery on its ongoing programme of a better life
for all.
The greatest asset of any organisation is its human resources. All other
resources, however abundant, are meaningless without human resources capacity.
Through human resources, however, all other resources can be created. It is
because of this crucial nature of human resources that they are lately referred
to as human capital, a clear recognition of their contribution to the value of
an organisation.
Even, however, as we refer to our staff as human resources or capital,
uppermost in our minds is the idea that these are people, sentient beings with
hearts that beat, minds that think, and spirits that live. These are mothers
and fathers and sons and daughters. They are people with hopes, dreams,
yearnings, and aspirations. They live, they feel, they love. In a word, they
seek fulfilment.
Our goal as an employer, then, is to see people, not workers, human beings,
not staff numbers.
Our Employee Health and Wellness Programme (EHWP) is our response to that
challenge â the challenge of making our employees feel that we are worthy of
their service, and that their role in our nation's development is appreciated.
The EHWP is the vehicle through which we aim to ensure that every employee has
a psychological and physical support system in the workplace to make him or her
cope with any condition which might compromise his or her work performance.
In discharging that deliverable our approach is proactive, rather than
reactive. It therefore entails the creation of an environment which promotes
open interaction and positive relationships. We are committed to creating
conditions of emotional equanimity so as to reduce, to the maximum extent
possible, the possibility of stress, which is the single biggest pathology in
workplaces. It has been found that stress is the single biggest contributor to
poor relationships at work and a major contributor to low levels of
productivity.
Through the Employee Health and Wellness Programme we specifically aim,
therefore, to create a conducive work environment that enables our employees to
function optimally; promote the health and well-being of all our employees;
promote occupational health and safety; and mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS
on the public service workplace.
If it is considered that an average employee spends almost a third of his or
her life in the workplace it then becomes all the more critical that the
workplace be as comfortable, from a physical and psychological point of view,
as possible. All means possible have to be used to create an environment which
boosts employees' self-esteem and therefore enhance their work and
productivity.
Our approach is also holistic, taking into account, for example, the fact
that the dividing line between home and the workplace is a thin one. It is
against that background that we believe that a proper work environment enhances
the home situation, and vice versa. The design and development of our Employee
Health and Wellness Programme, therefore, should include as many of the role
players and stakeholders as possible, including healthcare practitioners.
I refer specifically to healthcare practitioners as, tragically, HIV and
AIDS and diseases such as diabetes have become serious threats to the stability
of the public service. We are particularly concerned in our capacity as an
employer because the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that at
least 26 million people infected with HIV worldwide are workers aged 15 to 49,
who are therefore in the prime of their working life. Some of those 26 million
workers are in our service, and they need us. Let us empower ourselves through
awareness, information and education, to give them the support they require to
manage their condition. Let us not make HIV and AIDS a death sentence for them.
We might not be able to cure AIDS but we can certainly manage it.
Ladies and gentlemen, the ILO has identified five major psychological
stressors in the workplace, and these are HIV and AIDS, smoking, stress,
violence and alcohol and substance abuse. Our Employee Health and Wellness
Programme takes all this information into account, and therefore it seeks to
provide as much information as possible about these stressors. More than that,
however, it seeks to provide the necessary support systems to help those who so
desire to break free of some of these stressors.
The programme, one must emphasise, is not government's Programme but yours.
It is you, as people, who work together. It is you, therefore, who impact upon
one another on a daily basis. The programme should therefore be seen primarily
as a day to day interface between yourselves as fellow workers, and that you
are all indebted to one another, owing one another love, care, comfort, concern
and companionship. These, if you reflect carefully, are the basic emotional
needs of human beings.
Our role as the employer, and as government, is to provide the resources and
the environment required to promote the type of inter-employee relationships we
are advocating, and the programme, among other interventions, responds to that
challenge.
On this day, let us be reminded that no person is an island out and isolated
and by itself. All of us are part of the human family. It is thus proper and
appropriate that we demonstrate those filial relations dating back to the time
of creation with our fellow human beings. Margaret Walker, an African American
poet, puts this identification and care for one's people and the hope of a new
and better world for them, movingly as follows:
For my people standing, staring and trying to fashion a better way from
confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that
will hold all the people, all the faces, all the Adams and Eves and their
countless generations.
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be
written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a
people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and strength
of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial
songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take
control.
Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, let a new world be born through our Employee
Health and Wellness Programme.
It now remains for me to thank you for yet another year of hardships and
challenges, yes, for the North West province, but also a year of another
service to the people of South Africa. It is because of you and your
contribution, day by day, politics or no politics, to the mandate of government
that we are still here, standing, and ready to continue our struggle for a
province whose sole interest and concentration is a better life for its
citizens. Everything else must be secondary to that.
May I take this opportunity to wish you, your families and loved ones, as
early as now, a beautiful Christmas and a New Year of your hopes, dreams and
aspirations.
I thank you all.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, North West Provincial Government
14 November 2007
