The director of research and policy at the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), Simon Eppel, said the union regretted the extent of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) looting that happened during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Eppel said there were many lessons to be learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the response of trade unions to the pandemic.
He said while the union had thought of encouraging clothing companies and other small businesses to respond to the need for PPE, the union regretted the amount of looting of public funds and corruption that occurred.
Eppel was speaking at a webinar hosted by the National Economic Development and Labor Council (Nedlac) on lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Eppel said around 15% of jobs in the formal sector were lost between 2020 and 2021 as a result of the pandemic.
“We ran a massive intervention trying to ensure that the PPE produced was manufactured in this country, which would mean rather than relying on international imports, we could activate local factories and get them to provide PPE,” he said.
Eppel said the union suspected that there was corruption with the PPE tenders and other deals.
“The way we tried dealing with it was within governments, calling out provincial governments to their senior executives, and trying to bring in other departments. I don’t think we realised the scale of corruption going on there,” Eppel said.
He said he believed that corruption in South Africa was due to lack of moral fibre.
Eppel said it was important for trade unions not to leave the fight against corruption to the government alone.
“We need to tackle this problem with social partners, and we are doing some work at Nedlac on trying to amend the procurement legislation,” he said.
Commenting on businesses which had forced workers to vaccinate, Eppel said forced vaccinations were not a big problem in the clothing and textile sector.
“There has not been a major crisis. There have been instances of workers being fired in other industries where we operate, and there we take on and challenge it on a case-by-case basis. But this was a bigger problem in other parts of the economy,” Eppel said.