Pretoria – Lobby group, the SaveSA Smelters campaign on Friday said politicians in South Africa, who have been criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country canvassing for votes ahead of the November 1 polls, have failed to address the concerns of thousands of workers who are on the verge of losing their jobs.
“Fellow South Africans, it is a pity that we are in an election period. We see politicians going up and down, day and night, promising our people heaven and earth. They are also promising our people jobs. We have not heard a single politician talking about smelters which are currently closed,” said Elias Mokwana, convenor of SaveSA Smelters.
“We have lost several thousand jobs in the smelting industry, over the part two to three years. We are at risk of losing thousands more jobs in the smelting industry.”
He said government is not batting an eyelid as loads of South African raw materials continue to be shipped off to foreign nations in Asia and Europe.
“We ask ourselves as SaveSA Smelters campaign, if indeed we should believe in these promises of creating jobs being made by these politicians. We really find that to be unbelievable,” said Mokwana.
“We are calling on the president of the country, the minister of mineral resources, the treasury to consider the plight of the SaveSA Smelters campaign, and reopen our smelters. We call on all the political leadership to consider saving our jobs, our businesses by reopening our smelters.”
Mokwana appealed to voters when they cast their ballots on Monday, in the hotly contested local government elections, to “remember that our smelters are closed”.
In July, as South Africa continued to experience major job losses amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a subdued economic outlook, the SA Communist Party (SACP) added its voice to the many organisations calling on the government to introduce policies restricting the exportation of raw materials, particularly chrome ore, to save jobs.
Lobby group SaveSA Smelters has been running an intense campaign, warning about impending job losses as smelters in South Africa continue to close owing to the exportation of chrome ore. SaveSA Smelters has urged the government to speed up the implementation of the mooted tax on the export of raw ore, as it announced in October last year.
IOL