Mpfariseni Thinavhuyo, 41, a former security guard at Edenvale Hospital in Modderfontein, sleeps outside the building on cardboard under a tarpaulin tent.
He’s ashamed to go home to Limpopo and tell his family he has lost his job, so he and about 70 others have been camping outside the hospital since February 1.
Thinavhuyo worked there for seven years. The private company that employed him, Jackcliffy Trading, had a contract with the Gauteng health department. But after three months of no pay, the group of about 100 found out from hospital staff on November 9 that Jackcliffy had terminated its contract with the department at the end of October.
No-one had bothered to tell them. This, after they had not been paid since August. The group say they tried many times to contact their employer but were unable to get hold of anyone at the company.
On Friday, their last, desperate strategy to get the money owed to them or force the Gauteng health department to employ them directly came to an end when the high court in Johannesburg granted the department an interim order to remove them from the pavement outside the hospital.
Provincial health department spokesperson Kwara Kekana confirmed the order. The department had argued that the protesters were obstructing the entrance of the hospital.
She could not say when the removal would take place. Kekana confirmed the Jackcliffy had been paid in full.
Thinavhuyo is owed a total of R22,766.63, according to a Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) ruling in January. It’s a lot of money for a man with five dependents to feed — his wife, brother-in-law and three children.
“I’m ashamed to go home,” Thinavhuyo said. “As a father how can I look my child in the eye and say I have no money? Sometimes I regret coming here at all ... I spent seven years rendering my services here.”
Jackcliffy director Moses Malada told the Sunday Times he had terminated the contract with the department because it had not increased his payment.
“The contract was awarded in 2016 but the remuneration has stayed the same. A lot has changed since then, even the price of a loaf bread. We approached the department asking for an adjustment but they didn’t respond.”
He said when a new security company was brought in, his employees expected the company to take over their contracts “but this didn’t happen”.
“The department of health is the one to blame, how can you have a contract run seven years at the same rate?”
Malada claimed he did not know about the CCMA case that 10 of the workers won in January, awarding them back pay for September, October and November.
The Sunday Times has seen the ruling. In it the workers claim that when they went to the Jackcliffy offices in Pretoria to ask why they had not been told that the contract had been terminated, the CEO said he had instructed a manager to tell them.
CCMA commissioner Norman Mathebula found that Jackcliffy “owes the applicants back pay for the months of September, October and November 2021. Bonus pay. Sunday pay. Holiday pay and short pay for the month of August.”
He ordered Jackcliffy to pay R224,418 to the 10 applicants.
Malada said “if the workers did win the case then there is no way we can ignore the CCMA ruling” but said he needed to “check with HR”.
On Thursday Thinavhuyo and a group of eight, mostly male, former employees sat in the shade of a clump of bushes.
On a large mud-spattered tarpaulin, the women sat on chairs or on foam mattresses on the floor.
The mattresses, like the cooking pots and the portable toilet, were donated by “Good Samaritans”.
Mululo Maeba, 36, said she has three children and her eldest could not go to Unisa because she did not have the R250 he needed to register.
“I did nothing wrong. We want our money and our jobs back.
“We can’t even apply for the R350 [Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant] because we didn’t get a UI19 [form]. They didn’t tell us [we were losing our jobs] and so we are still ‘employed’.”
The UI19 form is used by employers to submit particulars of their workers to the Unemployment Insurance Fund database.
Maeba's friend, Prudence Vhutshilo, 56, said the group was relying on food given by hospital staff. Sometimes it’s a loaf of bread, which is shared, or someone will bring a cabbage they can cook.
On Thursday the fires were lit but there wasn’t any food.
Thinavhuyo said with all the money the health department had spent on the court case, it could have paid them their meagre salaries and the would be gone.
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