After decades in the limbo, the Department of Labour’s Sheltered Employment Factories (SEF) has finally been conferred a legal status in terms of the new Employment Services Act.
Sheltered Employment Factories Chief Executive Silumko Nondwangu is over the moon. Nondwangu has thanked all parties involved in the process leading to the conferring of the legal status to SEF. Nondwangu was speaking during the Public Employment Services (PES) Branch Management Committee (BMC) meeting held in Pretoria recently.
“For the branch and the department this is a good story to tell for an entity that had no legal status for a number of decades. We are also grateful of the Department’s Public Employment Services branch for the support towards ensuring provision for people with disabilities.
“The conferring of the legal status to SEF takes it a step forward into making the organisation a Government component. Our end goal is the conferring of a proclamation. For decades we have been operating on Memoranda of Agreements, which had to be revised from time to time,” he said.
Nondwangu said, as per the Employment Services Act: “the perceived impact of this (legal status), is that we will have a clearly defined mandate and legal status”.
He said the way forward for management was to develop processes that would lead to Labour Minister and the President of the country to proclaim SEF as a government component.
Nondwangu said SEF would be engaging the department’s legal service and government technical assistance advisory council to assist with technical provisions with regard to development of the proclamation.
In terms of the new ES Act, the SEF is to be renamed. Nondwangu said SEF was planning a launch of the new corporate identity.
He said the core functions of SEF once it has undergone a corporate change will remain in force. Nondwangu said SEF was also in the process to collaborate with the Compensation Fund to implement the Compensation for Occupational and Diseases Act (Coida Act) for the factory workers.
Whereas the factories might have been accountable to PES Branch in the past, as a government component with a legal identity the accountability of the entity will now reside with Labour Minister, Nondwangu said.
He also expects the current arrangement in regard to financing to continue through a subsidy from the Department of Labour and the National Treasury, and any other donations that may arise and through operations.
Nondwangu said the matter of 120 employees who were semi-private and semi-public has been resolved and the workers have been migrated to PES business branch with effect from April 1. He said they were now finalising teething problems relating to organisational development and human resources matters relating to conditions of employment.
The Sheltered Employment Factories is an entity of the Department of Labour catering for employment of disabled people. The primary focus of the factories is about giving dignity and providing employment to people with disabilities. Recently, SEF unveiled its business strategy which it has begun implementing to turn around its fortunes.
The SEF was founded in 1949 as a non-profits organisation and also government post-Second World War intervention to alleviate the plight of returned soldiers and the disabled people in general to play an active role in the labour market.
SEF has 12 factories in South Africa operating in seven provinces. The factories are based in Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, East London, Johannesburg, Kimberley, Pietermaritzburg, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom and Pretoria.
The factories manufacture furniture, textiles, metal work; leather work, book binding; and screen printing among other products.
Enquiries:
Page Boikanyo
Departmental Spokesperson
Cell: 082 809 3195
E-mail: page.boikanyo@labour.gov.za
