A South African union
representing car workers has agreed a new pay deal, ending a month-long strike that has crippled the industry.
The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa accepted a 10 per cent pay rise this year and eight per cent in the next two years.
The strike in the car components industry caused severe disruption, especially to exports.
Last week BMW said it had stopped “all future plans” to expand in South Africa because of the industrial action.
Under the deal, pay at small-to-medium-sized car parts firms will only raise wages by nine per cent in the first year, followed by eight per cent in the subsequent two years.
“The strike was very hard for us,” Irvin Jim, the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, told reporters.
The car components’ strike followed industrial action by workers at car manufacturers themselves, which hit production at BMW, Ford, Nissan and General Motors and cost an estimated $2 billion in lost output.
Contributory Pension Scheme contributors rise to 5.6 million.
About 5.6 million workers have registered under the Contributory Pension Scheme, according to the National Pension Commission (PenCom).
Latest figures from the commission revealed that the scheme had also generated a large pool of investible funds of over N3.5 trillion invested in various financial instruments, a huge growth when compared with estimated pension liabilities in the public sector prior to the reform of the industry in 2004.
The Acting Director-General, PenCom, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, said the process of the major amendment of the Pension Reform Act, 2004 was currently at the final stages of consideration by the National Assembly.
She said the commission had recently organised an interactive workshop in order to acquaint Judges of the superior courts with the basic understanding of the CPS to enable them adjudicate on pension matters effectively.
PenCom, she added, had also established a call centre for use by members of the public so as to enhance its service delivery through an efficient complaints resolution process.
According to her, the commission embarked on the establishment of offices in all the six geo-political zones of the country in order to decentralise its activities and bring them closer to the contributors and retirees.
“With our presence in the South-West zone now, we expect all stakeholders to avail themselves of our services by visiting our office to make enquiries, lodge complaints and seek enlightenment on the Contributory Pension Scheme,” Anohu-Amazu said.
The acting director-general said due to the commission’s renewed focus on efficient service delivery; it had sought to reduce the need for contributors and retirees to travel from various parts of the country to Abuja before accessing its services.
The presence in the different parts of the country, she added, would facilitate closer interaction with the state pension offices by assisting them to comply with the CPS.