GroundUp reports that Department of Employment and Labour (DEL) Minister Thulas Nxesi has promised to send a bus to serve as a mobile labour office to assist people living in rural areas in Limpopo.

Many people have resorted to sleeping outside the Thohoyandou office to be among the first in line to apply for Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) benefits, but they are often still not served that day. In September, GroundUp reported on more than 100 people who had been sleeping with blankets and cardboard sheets outside the Makhado labour office in Louis Trichardt. In response to many complaints, Nxesi and Deputy Minister Boitumelo Moloi visited the Thohoyandou Labour Centre on Tuesday. Nxesi promised that the department would get a mobile office to provide basic assistance to people in remote villages. Commenting on the long queues at some labour offices, Nxesi said the Covid-19 pandemic had had a massive impact on service, with “millions of people flooding our offices” after losing their jobs due to lockdown. “Some of our systems collapsed because they were not used to dealing with huge numbers. Due to Covid-19 protocols, some of our staff members worked from home and this partly contributed to the long queues. In addition, some of the people who were supposed to apply for the R350 social distress grant, got lost queuing at our offices and we redirected them to the right offices,” Nxesi indicated.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Bernard Chiguvare at GroundUp

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