Johannesburg - A group of trade unions, including the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) and the National Union of Metalworkers Union (Numsa), will take to the streets of Woodmead on Tuesday, February 14, in protest of the non-payment of medical insurance.
This comes after Numsa accused security companies for defrauding workers out of their medical insurance benefits.
Numsa recently reported that the Council for Medical Schemes was actively investigating cases against security companies that deducted money from workers for medical insurance but failed to pay it over to Affinity Health, the chosen service provider.
According to a media statement, Numsa and other trade unions such as Abanqobi Workers Union, Kungwini Amalgamated Workers Union and Satawu will march in protest over the iMvula Group’s continued deductions of millions of rand from the salaries of poorly paid security officers despite not relaying such deductions to the designated health-care service provider.
In a joint media statement, the unions allege that the group, hrough its subsidiary iMvula Quality Protection, has illegally misrepresented itself and is illegally deducting the salaries of affected workers.
"In this regard, the salaries of unsuspecting security officers are deducted under the guise of providing them with the medical care benefits provided by Affinity Health, as per the MCA.
“For instance, there is evidence that iMvula Quality Protection(which is a party to the MCA) colludes with Kaelo (a subsidiary of DisChem) to coerce its employees to subscribe to Kaelo, which is fraudulent and in violation of the MCA as Kaelo is not the designated service provider.
“This denies the security officers the health-care benefits that they fought so hard for, as Kaelo provides an inferior service to the standard agreed to in the MCA," the unions said.
According to Numsa, the unions in the private security sector would hand over their memorandum of demands to the management of the iMvula on Tuesday at their headquarters in Woodmead.
"As difficult as this action is for everyone, it is far more difficult for a family that is relying on a breadwinner's continued health benefits. We had hoped to avoid this action and asked iMvula to provide us with proof that they have desisted from such shameful and immoral acts against its workers and are ready to comply with the MCA. But IMvula resorted to threatening us with legal action," read the statement.
The Star