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The National Education Health & Allied Workers Union [NEHAWU] in Limpopo notes with regret utterances attributed to the premier of Limpopo, Chupu Mathabatha in his response after receiving memorandum of demands from COSATU on October 07, 2016 regarding a provincial march of NEHAWU on the September 30, 2016.

The union is utterly shocked that the premier claims that he has met all NEHAWU demands and therefore saw no need for the union to march.

NEHAWU met with government over two days on the 29/08/2016 and August 31, 2016 and came to some agreement with stringent time frames on several issues some of which were highlighted in our media statement. It is however disappointing that government has violated the agreement and failed to implement what we agreed upon. For example:

• We have not received a report on the review of the Personnel Management Framework policy which we were told will be reviewed in an EXCO meeting of September 14, 2016 but government remains quite on that issue.
• The Premier's office was mandated to convene a meeting involving the department of social development, treasury and NEHAWU to resolve all problems in the department of social development with immediate effect but 45 days later that meeting has not been convened.

It is on that basis that we reiterate the relevance of that march and express our disappointment that the premier was not there to receive our memorandum of demands. We remain resolute that we will only stop our programmee of action when our demands are resolved because our experience is that government has often entered into agreements but finds it difficult to implement those agreements.

We condemn any attempts by anyone including the premier to try to confuse workers in an attempt to demobilize them. This is an age old trick which has failed previously and will never work for the employer but will continue to anger workers more.

Our campaign will unfold as outlined in the ultimatum which was served to the employer as long as our demands remain unresolved. We further call on our members to remain mobilized and we will outline further course of action in due time.

This campaign should not unfold on the basis of the comfort of the premier or the employer but it must be driven in order to achieve satisfaction and comfort of NEHAWU members in Limpopo.

Issued by NEHAWU Limpopo