Strife over learnerships
A Mossel Bay resident has complained about BEE Corp, a company in town which offers learnership programmes.
She said 20 people, including herself, who had signed up for the learnership programme and were supposed to be paid each month, had not been paid during the lockdown, or they were paid a lesser amount than agreed in their contracts, and paid sporadically.
BEE Corp is a skills development provider that assists companies in improving their B-BBEE scorecard by implementing learnerships.
Learnerships are a way that companies can maximise on their skills development return and unemployed or employed individuals can be upskilled through various accredited learnerships.
Companies have to spend, according to their payroll, a certain percentage on this and that funding is then channelled into learnerships.
BEE Corp project manages the learnerships on behalf of host organisations. They assist unemployed learners to access a qualification and for that the learners are paid a stipend.
Feeling they were not being heard by BEE Corp, a few people in the learnership programme went to the BEE Corp office in Diaz, together with representatives from the EFF political party, to demand answers as to why they had not been paid their monthly stipends.
In a statement BEE Corp told the Mossel Bay Advertiser that a meeting was held with all the learners together with the representatives of the EFF on 24 November.
The COO of BEE Corp explained and discussed stipends after ensuring that all learners were comfortable with the meeting being held in English, according to the statement from BEE Corp.
BEE Corp explained all the conditions of the contract and what the requirements were and the only feedback was that the contract needed to stipulate the amount of the deductions and that the penalties were harsh and that the company had to please reconsider the penalty amount.
These “penalties” were incurred if learners did not hand in assignments as required.
BEE Corp explained in the statement: “A stipend is not a salary and is for the learner to get to class, work and get something to eat.”
According to the SETA (Sector Education and Training Authority) a learner cannot be paid if he or she has not done work or attended class, BEE Corp noted.
“The matter is being handled according to the Labour Relations Act,” BEE Corp concluded.