The Chairperson of the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE), Tabea Kabinde told the gathering that transformation in the workplace has been very slow for the designated groups, and even more so for the Persons With Disabilities (PWD), where change has hardly taken place.
Kabinde was addressing the Employment Equity roadshow held at Diep in die Berg Conference centre in the east of Pretoria today.
“Out of 27 532 reports received, covering a total of 7 215 960 employees, only 1,2% are persons with disabilities. We are now stretching it to only 2 percent as a proposed target. Please do not overlook persons with disabilities,” Kabinde said.
The chairperson told the gathering that whilst there are employers who are transforming their workplaces in terms of hiring PWD, very few go beyond the 1.2 percent. She said there must be a demonstrable commitment to employ those with disabilities.
Kabinde told the roadshow that any person can earn the status of disability due to an accident or illness and ‘this does not mean the end’.
On the issue of sector targets, the CEE Chairperson told the meeting that a lot of noise in the media is created by misunderstandings. “When we start fighting, we forget that we are talking about the Economically Active Population (EAP). The EAP focuses only on people who are working, looking for work and are employable”, she said.
She told the workshop that it cannot be that a group with a small EAP continues to occupy top management level posts whereas, the racial groups with a higher percentage of the EAP occupies a small fraction of those top management posts. She said this is not possible, “unless we argue that Africans are stupid to occupy top management positions”. “What we are saying is simple, please employ suitably qualified people to those positions.”
Conducted under the theme: “Real transformation makes business sense”, the Employment Equity Roadshows by the Department of Employment and Labour in collaboration with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) are working to create awareness on the recently promulgated EE amendments, sector targets and regulations. The workshops further aim to deal with the impact of employment equity in the labour market; by sharing the results of the 23rd CEE Annual Report. Part of the session is also spent on a demonstration of the online EE system with the incorporated amendments to reporting on the system and how certificates of compliance will be generated. There is also a presentation of the CCMA’s case law related to EE, professionally done by a Commissioner from the CCMA.
The national series workshops/roadshows started on 18 July and will conclude on 29 August 2023.
The remaining August workshops are as follows:
Gauteng
- Johannesburg (02 August 2023)
Mpumalanga
- Witbank (Emalahleni) – (15 August 2023)
- Nelspruit (Mbombela) – (16 August 2023)
Western Cape
- George (15 August 2023)
- Cape Town (16 August 2023)
Eastern Cape
- Gqeberha (22 August 2023)
- East London (23 August 2023)
- Mthatha (24 August 2023)
Free State
- Welkom (22 August 2023)
- Bloemfontein (23 August 2023)
KwaZulu-Natal
- Durban (29 August 2023)
The EE workshops are targeted at Employers or Heads of organisations, Academics, Assigned Senior Managers, Consultative forum members, Human Resource Practitioners, Trade Unions, employees and other interested stakeholders. The national workshops are from 10:00am to 14:00pm covering all provinces.