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MBABANE – Senator Busi Dlamini has implored the Minister of Labour and Social Security to look into a E22 million fund that is allegedly lying idle at the TEBA Offices.
The Employment Bureau of Africa (TEBA) is an agency which recruits labour for the mining industry and co-ordinates the payment of migrant workers’ salaries to their families and it has a footprint in the country.
It was introduced more than a century ago, post the second Anglo-Boer war in 1902, to support mines in meeting one of their country’s national priorities, which is to expand mineral production. The senator shared with Minister of Labour and Social Security, Phila Buthelezi that she attended a meeting recently, where an official in the Office of TEBA in South Africa was present.
She submitted that the SA official shared with the meeting that there was a sum of E22 million that was unclaimed at TEBA, despite that there was an outcry from local ex-miners about not being paid what was due to them.
Unclaimed
The issue came to the fore as the minister was making his first reading on the Workmen’s Compensation (Amendment) Bill, 2023. “I was in a meeting a few days back and an official from South Africa shared that Eswatini had a sum of E22 million that was unclaimed at TEBA. We urge you minister to follow up on this matter because emaSwati, who devoted their lives and worked in the mines, have not received monies due to them to this day,” she said.
Dlamini submitted that he shared contact details of the minister with the SA official and the minister should expect to hear from him.
Responding to the matter, Buthelezi said the challenge in this matter was that the leaders of the ex-miners associations were not truthful to their members and had the tendency of giving them (members) false hopes.
The minister disputed that there was E22 million unclaimed fund at TEBA belonging to the ex-miners, stating that their communication should be controlled because they were not being honest with their members.
The minister made an example of the E5 billion payout South African gold producers agreed on with law firms representing thousands of miners, who contracted the fatal lung diseases, silicosis and tuberculosis, stating that there were no recipients of this fund thus far in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.
“I would advise emaSwati to rely on the ministry for information pertaining to ex-miners and their pay because the department that deals with compensation is handson in these issues,” he said.
Swaziland Migrant Mineworkers Association (SWAMMIWA) and Treasurer of the Southern African Miners Association (SAMA) Vama Jele’s mobile phone was not available on the network and attempts to get his comment on the matter were unfruitful.
Clarity
Last year November, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security said it would facilitate the convening of ex-miners with TEBA and Fairlife to give the former clarity on whether they qualified to get silicosis compensation or not.
The matter of ex-miners made the discussion during the ministry’s portfolio committee second quarter performance report in the House of Assembly at the time.
It emerged that a group of ex-miners at Matsanjeni North, where Minister Buthelezi is the Member of Parliament, in an attempt to get clarity on where they stood in terms of getting their compensation for silicosis. Buthelezi said, at the time, the ministry would facilitate a consultation forum, where the office of TEBA together with that of Fairlife would go to each inkhundla and meet with the ex-miners to clarify to each individual where they stood inasfar as being entitled to the compensation was concerned.
Fairlife members work in close collaboration with the representatives of the communities of mine workers organised in syndicate to advance the changes on the ground in partnership with the civil society.