Chamber wants North Coast back to work

Critical employer sectors on the North Coast should be allowed to return to work at full strength as soon as possible, the region’s business chamber has urged government.

The iLembe Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Tourism has asked Co-operative Affairs and Governance minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to urgently broaden the lockdown regulations for Level 4, to allow thousands of people to return to work.

Chamber CEO Cobus Oelofse asked the minister in a submission on Monday to relax restrictions in relation to manufacturing, construction and the retail trade.

“Considering the operational (and financial) viability of part plant commissioning, it is proposed that all manufacturing entities be allowed to scale up to 100 percent, at their discretion,” Oelofse said of manufacturing businesses, principally those in Isithebe, which is the country’s largest industrial park.

He argued that partial scaling did not reflect the complexities of plant re-commissioning, associated workforce deployment, nor the extended raw material input requirements, supply and the associated inventory cost.

“The iLembe Chamber is rolling out advice and systems that will assist business to comply with the required risk-adjusted measures in place to operate at 100 percent employment, including the monitoring and recording of Covid-19 infections at employee level.”

The government is allowing civil construction to resume on May 1, but the chamber wants the reprieve to extend to commercial and residential construction because the activity employs thousands of people.

“The current Level 4 extension, to public works projects only, will have a limited disease control impact, but have the unintended consequence of disadvantaging thousands of employees employed in the construction sector that exclusively works for private sector developers and contractors,” Oelofse said.

Consideration should also be given to bringing forward the resumption of commercial and residential construction.

The current tiered approach to e-commerce should be scrapped and they should be allowed to operate normally.

Distribution networks are functioning, including courier services and warehouses that have been operating under both Level 5 and 4, while home deliveries are becoming the norm under Level 4.

“Limiting the products and goods being distributed by these exact and existing national distribution networks will have no public health consequence, and more importantly, needlessly delaying economic recovery.”

E-commerce to all products, nationally and internationally, should be opened, he said.

In further argument of resuming work, Oelofse said that considering the controlled environments at workplaces, compared to the rising number of infections in communities, workers might be better protected at work than at home.

He concluded that the chamber’s representations were made on behalf of business interests and its mandate of local economic advancement.

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