Durban - FOR Pinky Mashiane, the gazetting of the inclusion of domestic workers under the COMPENSATION FOR OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES AND DISEASES ACT, 1993, was the culmination of a nine-year fight she had not given up on.
Last week the Compensation Fund Commissioner gazetted the amendments to the act. The amendments were done after the fight for domestic workers was taken all the way to the constitutional court.
The amendments said: “This is to inform the domestic employees that based on the Constitutional Court Order dated 19 November 2020, domestic employees are now covered under the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA). This means that Domestic employees will now be entitled for compensation in the event they are injured or contract diseases while on duty.”
It then said that the compensation paid to domestic workers would be based on an approved formula and would have minimum and maximum compensation.
Mashiane, president of United Domestic Workers of South Africa, said she did not know how to express the joy from what had happened. She said this was the culmination of a long journey. “When I started, nobody took me seriously but I did not give up,” she said.
Mashiane who was a domestic worker, said she was inspired to take up the matter after she read an article on the death of 43-year-old Maria Mahlangu who allegedly fell into a swimming pool and died in March 2012, in Pretoria.
This and other cases of domestic workers being injured on duty and brutally killed inspired her to fight for the rights of domestic workers. “There are a lot of things that happen to domestic workers,” she said.
It was not an easy journey though as she tried law clinics from various universities who did not believe in her case. It was through the help of United States International Workers Rights Organisation Solidarity Centre who supported her cause that she was able to fight for domestic workers and the family of Mahlangu to be compensated.
The fight went all the way to the Constitutional Court where it was ruled last year that this (compensation) would be applied retrospectively as far back as 1994.
Mashiane said she hoped that this would encourage employers register their domestic workers. She had realised during the lockdown that many domestic workers did not receive Unemployment Insurance Fund money as they were not registered by their employers.
Mashiane said she hoped that employers would implement the legislation and acknowledged that it would also be difficult to implement. What was needed was for employers to meet domestic workers half way, she said.
Daily News