Speech by Gauteng MEC for Public Transport, Roads and Works Ignatius Jacobs at the Departmental Labour Summit, Gallagher Estate

Programme director
Honourable guests
Colleagues, comrades and friends
Ladies and gentlemen

We are all gathered here, today, at this Labour Summit to take stock of the fruits of our hard work in turning around the fortunes of our department and making a meaningful contribution to service delivery, in view of recent challenges and may the summit also help us to use our collective muscle and wisdom to bring about a better life for all the people of our province.

This Labour Summit takes place on the eve of the presentation of our annual report to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, a report which we are immensely proud and confident to unveil in order to acknowledge the excellent work of all our departmental teams in our successful Turn-Around Strategy that we adopted in the year 2006. At the same time, the summit also puts us in a better position to bring about industrial peace and justice and better labour relations.

The hosting of the summit here at Gallagher Estate, within the precinct that plays host to the Pan African Parliament, also takes place five months after the Annual Conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a major international platform for discussion on issues affecting and defining workplace relations across the world. Let me also hasten to say that this summit is modelled on the International Labour Conference, in both form and content, seeking to ensure adequate representation of employees in discussion and dialogue, working hand in hand with labour formations National Education and Health Workers Union (Nehawu) and Public Servants Association (PSA). In our view, as government, our strategic initiatives on socio-economic growth and development would be meaningless if they were not informed by the expertise, talent and knowledge of the workforce.

Our gathering in this summit is informed by the need for unity in action, brought about by the unity of opposites, against the backdrop of healthy tensions and contradictions that lead to positive outcomes. Indeed, the workforce and the employer need one another and the manner in which we address attendant challenges must necessarily are for the benefit of broader society, for we are all in the business of servicing the public.

The capacity of the state to change the quality of life of the people of our country, and the residents of our province, relies on the strength of the partnership between all of us in government and our important partners in civil society, especially organised labour and community based organisations, and activists.

As government, we believe that the success of our programmes depends on our commitment to invest in our people, especially public servants, who are at the forefront of our drive to reduce poverty and underdevelopment. Indeed, this will help in producing healthy, skilled and productive people and also build better and sustainable communities in our province. Together, we need to continue the process of building a caring society, founded on the principles of respect for human dignity and the integrity of all persons, irrespective of race, colour or creed.

Indeed, we are bound by historical achievements, and a time tested umbilical cord, to continue working together in developing and implementing programmes aimed at addressing the challenge of meaningful transformation, in the workplace, and in society in general. Therefore, such a history dictates that we all help restore the dignity of our communities by addressing the basic conditions of employment of our people.

Together, we must ensure that the historical mission of bringing about a living wage and building a sustainable social safety net continues to characterise our democratic order. At the same time, we need to work towards reducing the impact and prevalence of poverty and underdevelopment. Therefore, the establishment of National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) is a major milestone in our historic mission and we all need to ensure that its progressive work becomes a central part of our industrial relations policies and practices in the workplace.

In the same vein, we need to ensure the implementation of the resolutions of the International Labour Organisation on equality in the workplace. In this regard, we must take a leaf from the 1998 International Labour Conference that adopted the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which spoke about the need to set fundamental international labour standards, in the workplace, concerning freedom of association, the right to organise and collective bargaining and the promotion of non-discriminatory practices.

In our own local circumstances, the issue of eradicating racism, sexism and ensuring equitable access to skills development and training is crucial to real change in the workplace. The challenge of limiting the effects and the prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the workplace also remains one of the biggest challenges of our times, calling on all of us to intensify our efforts to reduce its negative on the quality of life of government employees, in particular, and society in general.

In this regard, work is being done to ensure the prevention of the spread of HIV; the provision of support for those affected and infected by this pandemic; the management and mitigation of the impact of AIDS on the workplace and underlying communities and the implementation of Nedlac Guidelines to eliminate stigma and discrimination on the basis of real or perceived HIV status.

Communication is an essential key to effective governance and an important part of ensuring healthy workplace relations across all sections of the organisation. Together, we are engaged in the process of transition from mere public administration of services to that of public governance and accountability, by introducing an era of the collective mobilisation, nurturing and enhancement of skills and resources to deepen democratic practice and rapidly increase access to service delivery for all our people.

This is aimed ensuring that, indeed, the people do govern by strengthening governance and accountability in government, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the use of state resources and its people, especially public servants. Public Governance will help improve service quality and efficiency in the public service, and government employees would establish partnerships with communities in finding sustainable solutions to local challenges, thereby ensuring community ownership of such solutions.

Therefore, government is, thus, the instrument used by society to as a whole as opposed to being limited to public administrators, public employees and politicians. This also helps increase the capacity of government in dealing with attendant challenges. It puts public servants in a better position to evaluate the impact of their work whereby they assume responsibility for their own performance as measured against customer satisfaction. Thus, government becomes people-centred machinery for meaningful change in society.

We are convinced that the quality of public servants that we have in our department will continue to help us to change face of our communities for the better, relying on skill, commitment and dedication to bring about a better life for all. We are also confident that the summit will help us to further inculcate a culture of good practice on the part of both the employer and the public servants in respect of good practices and measures of good performance, such as commitment to support the development of our staff; encouraging staff to improve their own performance and the performance of others and improving the image of the organisation as a whole by recognising the contributions of all employees, instead of focusing on a few good performers. However, we will continue to honour those highly dedicated public servants whose contribution exceeds the norm.
In the same vein, we will ensure equal access to opportunities for individual personal development in all our teams by setting clearly understood performance objectives and plans between the employer and the employee; and putting together an action plan to realise those objectives.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Public Transport, Roads and Works, Gauteng Provincial Government
22 November 2007