Matsapha Town Council continues to lead by its mission of providing excellent municipal services and enhancing Matsapha’s status an ideal place for industrial, business and residential investment through participatory governance. This was evident as the municipality hosted an awareness breakfast meet for ‘Matsapha Town Council’s Requirements for Workplaces’. This meeting was held on the 11th of April 2018, at the Matsapha Town Council civic center.
Aware of the fact that Matsapha Town houses a number of businesses, the council saw the need to host a sensitization meeting for Matsapha business community on workplace requirements relating to safety, health, environment, town planning and building compliance requirements. This meeting was well attended by Matsapha Councilors, Representatives from the Ministry of Labour and Business operators of which the event was mainly targeting.
The tag line used on the day was “We are all Health Inspectors”. This emphasized the need for all business people to have a checklist where they can inspect their places of work prior to the official inspections done by the council’s inspectors. Councilor Siphesihle Sibandze, encouraged business owners to know the law, relating to running a business, as it would help them avoid incurring heavy fines. The official opening of the meeting was done by Matspha Town Clerk, Lucky Sukati whom highlighted the importance of hosting such meetings allowing all business representative to understand and gauge on their overall compliance with national laws on workplace requirements.
The highlight of the event however, was the presentation on results from an annual inspection which was conducted by the council, between the months of June and October 2017, where a total of 720 workplaces were visited. During these inspections workplaces were rated to ascertain the extent of compliance on the aspects that were assessed during the inspection. “The grading approach used for the inspections, was aimed at assisting workplaces to ascertain the degree of compliance and identify areas of improvement. The inspection grading of workplaces was piloted in the year 2017 and 650 workplaces obtained a score above 50%”, explained the councils Public Health Inspector, Zama Radebe.
As a means of applauding the efforts of the 650 workplaces that attained a score above 50%, the council will be issuing acknowledgement certificate to workplaces who indicated to have made efforts towards complying with the workplace requirements. The Programme Director for the day, Mxolisi Maphanga assured the business representatives that their acknowledgement certificates would be delivered to the deserving candidates at their workplaces.
