G Fraser-Moleketi: Public Service Health and Wellness Indaba

8 October 2006

Premier Ebrahim Rasool and members of your Executive Committee,
Members of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration,
Public Service Commissioner, Dr Norman Maharaj,
Heads of government departments,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure for me to address you at this learning session. Let me
express my sincere gratitude to all of you for taking time out of your busy
schedules to attend this session that marks the official opening of the Public
Service Employee Health and Wellness Indaba VI.

It was only recently in January 2000 when I launched the Impact and Action
Project which was at that time aimed at ensuring that the public service is
able to sustain the delivery of quality services despite the potential
challenges that the HIV and AIDS epidemic and other life threatening health
conditions present us with.

Looking back it pleases me that even back then the intention was to address
all health-related aspects that have a potential of interfering with the
ability of the public service to deliver on the mandate of ensuring that we
have at our disposal, public service employees that are available, able and
willing to serve the people of our country. This is captured clearly in
resolution 8 of 2001 which formed the basis of our response.

The impact and action project was deliberately named as such because the
instruction I gave the team working on the project at that time was to ensure
that there is clear action to ensure that the purpose of the project is
achieved. I am once again pleased to announce that there was indeed a lot of
action in this regard. Some major achievements have been realised since the
inception of the Impact of Action Project in 2000.

Some of the achievements worth mentioning here tonight include the
following:

* Regulation

After in-depth consultation with employees through the Public Service
Co-ordinating and Bargaining Council (PSCBC) and other relevant structures, the
framework was added to the Public Service Regulations (PSR) and is now
mandatory.

* Recognition and acknowledgement

The programme continues to be recognised by the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) and other multinational agencies like the Joint United
Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA) etc as a model of good practice.

The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) team has been
called upon to provide technical support to other institutions outside the
public service. These include, among others, the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) desk in Botswana, South African Local Government Association
(SALGA) as well as other African States - Sierra Leone, Sudan, Zambia, Malawi
and Kenya.

As a result, I am pleased to announce that we have amongst us here tonight
five delegates from Malawi sponsored by CIDA to come and share our learning
with us.

* Improved employee benefits

The introduction of this framework has led to improvements in some of the
employee benefits within the public service. These include among others:

1. The development and implementation of the Government Employees Medical
Scheme (GEMS). GEMS was necessitated by a realisation during the impact
assessment phase of the project that about 40 percent of mainly the lower level
employees had no medical cover and would thus not have been able to access
adequate HIV and AIDS related care when necessary.

GEMS started recruiting members in January 2006 and included a comprehensive
HIV and AIDS disease management programme for all of the schemes five benefit
options. This includes access to clinical consultations, tele-counselling,
educational material, antiretrovirals (ARVs), therapeutic monitoring and
hospitalisation where necessary.

In addition, GEMS provides a full subsidy (100 percent) for employees on job
level one up to level five. This alone will provide enhanced access to decent
medical services to 191 000 employees who currently do not access the medical
benefit in this salary band. Dr Eugene Watson, the Principal Officer for GEMS,
will give a more detailed presentation on the scheme tomorrow.

2. The development of guidelines for the management of incapacity and
ill-health retirements. These guidelines were published, implementation systems
approved by Cabinet were put in place and the Department of Public Service and
Administration (DPSA) provides on-going support to the departments.

Since the implementation of the guidelines in the pilot departments, the
number of ill-health retirements has decreased from 1 721 in 2002 when the
pilot project started to 439 after the first full-year of implementation in
2004. This more efficient management process saved the public service millions
while at the same time allowing for the more adequate management of those who
genuinely require more leave than the allocated days.

3. The Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) was improved through the
introduction of an orphan's pension, funeral benefits as well as the redefining
of spouse to be more accommodating to the different cultures and real life
situations of employees.

* The Public Service Employee Health and Wellness Indabas

The fact that we are gathered here today to open the Public Service Employee
Health and Wellness Indaba VI is in itself a great achievement. It demonstrates
that our intention is to sustain some action around ensuring that our public
service employees are well enough and able to perform to the best of their
ability.

Since 2001, we have each year without failure convened this important
gathering that brings together implementers of the programmes from all
government departments to review our programmes, share best-practices as well
as inform the policy direction for the programme.

Premier, distinguished guests, ladies and gentleman, I am not sure how many
of us in this room tonight are aware that the South African public service is
the only employer in the world that convenes such high-level sessions
consistently to focus on ensuring that as an employer, we see to the health and
well-being of our employees.

This we do because we acknowledge and accept the fact that our human capital
is our most valuable resource. We realise as a government that without
available, able, healthy and willing employees the country will never be able
to realise the ideal of creating a better life for all our citizens and the
other ideals this government is striving to achieve. We realise that we need
our employees and we cannot do without them because, unlike many other
industries, the benefit of replacing employees with machines is not and will
remain unavailable to us.

Through convening the annual indabas we can claim to have learnt from the
ancient and yet effective leadership lessons of a great African leader and
military expert, King Shaka Zulu, who established the tradition of meeting with
his battalions after military operations to celebrate victories, acknowledge
and correct mistakes and to generally build confidence among his soldiers. This
tradition is known as "ukucoca impi" (discussing about warfare). Like King
Shaka Zulu, we convene every year to celebrate our achievements, acknowledge
and correct our shortcomings and most importantly, to plan and build the
necessary capacity to improve our programme.

I have outlined a few of the key achievements we have achieved thus far and
like it was done during King Shaka Zulus's reign, I will acknowledge that we
have and continue to experience some challenges. Despite the fact that the
implementation of the public service HIV and AIDS workplace framework is
mandatory, some departments are still not giving the programme the level of
priority it deserves.

The Public Service Commission (PSC) recently released a report, which among
others, stated that there is lack of senior management commitment to the
programme in some departments. This we will address by more effectively holding
the responsible managers accountable through the performance management
processes. Where managers responsible for implementing the programme are found
not to be taking this responsibility seriously, we will use the mechanisms
available to us to deal with the situation including the disciplinary procedure
should this be deemed necessary.

Another finding reported by the PSC on the same study is that 40 percent of
public service employees believe that HIV and AIDS are curable. This finding at
face value implies that our employees lack information. It is difficult for us
to accept this finding because we know for a fact that the most successfully
implemented aspect of our workplace HIV and AIDS programme is the information,
education and awareness one. This is confirmed by the same PSC report which
states in more than one place that the employees reported that there is
information overload.

It is difficult to understand how our employees, who over and above the
workplace programme, are exposed on a constant basis to HIV and AIDS related
information through the Khomanani campaign of the Department of Health, Soul
City, Lovelife and many other avenues could possibly hold such a view.

Now, to boost morale like King Shaka Zulu did with his battalion and to keep
you going until the next indaba, the main focus of our indaba this year is to
present the draft Public Service Employee Health and Wellness Framework for
consultation. We have among you here for the next two days implementers of the
programme, trade unions and our employees with disabilities, for whom there are
special arrangements through the proposed framework. We also have among the
delegates, local and international experts who will provide technical support
during the proceedings. At this point I would like to acknowledge the presence
in the audience of Mr Manuel Guillermo Martinez De LA Teja, Chairperson of the
Mexican Ergonomics Society whose participation at this indaba is sponsored by
one of our private sector partners, IGH. Mr De la Teja will present a paper on
ergonomics tomorrow.

From a policy perspective the proposed framework demonstrates that as the
biggest employer in the country we do indeed value our employees. The framework
is aimed at ensuring that we create a workplace environment throughout the
public service that will enable our employees to deal with health and
wellness-related challenges to allow them to function optimally. The framework
is also aimed at ensuring that as an employer, we do not expose our employees
to health and wellness-related risks at work. Through this framework we
undertake to ensure that all public service workplaces comply with all the
relevant health and wellness-related policies and legislation.

For the purposes of the framework we learn from the World Health
Organisation (WHO), which defines health as a state of complete physical,
mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity. We have thus adopted a working definition of employee health and
wellness as an optimal quality of working life for employees, resulting from
enhanced physical, mental and social well-being in the public service work
environment.

Through this programme it is envisaged that employees will receive
information support and other related services (as feasible) to deal with any
physical, emotional and social issues that might have an impact on their
ability to function at optimal levels. Programmes that enhance the general
health and well-being of employees will be promoted and as far as feasible, be
provided given the obvious benefit this will have in ensuring that employees
function optimally. It is further envisaged that the programme will result in
the minimisation of situations that might impact negatively on the health and
well-being of employees in the workplace. These include but are not limited to
the following:

* occupational hazards
* physical work environmental safety
* stress
* stigma and discrimination.

The critical pillars of the framework include:

* the HIV and AIDS framework launched in 2001
* occupational health and safety to ensure that our workplaces are safe and
free from unnecessary harm to our employees
* employee assistance programmes to attend to the psychosocial aspect of health
and wellness
* health promotion to promote general health and well-being and reduce the
occurrence of preventable health problems
* disease management mainly through the medical benefit available to our
employees; GEMS will be a critical player in this
* disaster management to ensure that should our employees at any of our
workplaces be faced with life-threatening situations that require urgent
evacuation of buildings and/or other emergency interventions, we are able to
provide such intervention to avoid the unnecessary exposure to further risks or
loss of life.

For the purposes of the framework, the DPSA will be responsible for
reviewing, monitoring and evaluation as well as supporting the implementation
of the programmes in government departments. The individual departments are
responsible for developing department-specific policies and programmes in line
with the public service framework and will remain accountable, among others, to
the DPSA.

It is important for me to stress that while the public service in general
and individual departments are responsible for making the programmes available
to employees, one of the most important principles of this framework is that
employees retain full responsibility for their own health. It is for this
reason that employees are identified as one of the key stakeholders and their
duties and responsibilities in this regard are clearly stated in the policy
framework.

The framework will be presented to you in more detail tomorrow and as the
Director-General has pointed out, you have copies of the draft framework in
your conference bags. Please read the framework well before the discussion
groups to enable you to participate more meaningfully. I trust that you will
give feedback and make the necessary comment to support the process of
finalising the framework. The collective wisdom of all Indaba VI participants
is required for us to end up with a Public Service Employee Health and Wellness
Framework that we can all be proud of and jointly own.

As I mentioned earlier in my speech, the Public Service Employee Health and
Wellness Framework pays special attention to vulnerable and marginalised groups
of employees like employees with disabilities. The framework thus contains
guidelines for managing disability in the public service, which will serve as a
management tool for departments. Advocate Steve Kekana will give a detailed
presentation on this framework that was developed by our own employees with
disabilities through a task team set up for this. Advocate Kekana is a
celebrity and likes the limelight. I do not wish to steal his limelight by
sharing too much information on this.

Given the obvious overlap between the employee health and wellness programme
and the efforts of our employment equity team in ensuring that the public
service is able to recruit and retain employees with disabilities, I have
deemed it necessary to use this forum to unveil the job access project.

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Public Service and Administration
8 October 2006

Chuma