State paying below minimum wage - report

Published Feb 2, 2013

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Johannesburg -

Government pays workers who are part of its official job creation programme as little as R30 per day, according to a report on Saturday.

The prescribed minimum wage for workers in the programme for extended public works, a government initiative, is R66.34 per day, Beeld reported.

According to the report, official statistics show that some provincial education and public works departments in the programme paid workers an average of R30 per day in the last three months of 2012.

However, workers in the agricultural sector in the Free State who were also part of the programme got R50 a day while workers in the same sector in Limpopo got R87 per day.

Spokeswoman for the programme Kgomotso Mathuloe told the newspaper that government departments which were part of the programme were expected to pay workers a minimum of R66.34 per day.

“The wages differ from province to province. The wage levels are influenced by socio-economic circumstances in various areas,” she told Beeld.

Mathuloe said the programme was established with various departments to ensure uniformity for the prescribed wage guidelines and to ensure that they were followed.

The labour department tasked the Employment Conditions Commission with reviewing the sectoral determination following an extended strike by Western Cape farmworkers for the minimum daily wage to be increased from R69 to R150. - Sapa

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