Labour law specialist Thabang Rapuleng says the new code of good practice regarding COVID-19 vaccinations that was gazetted on Tuesday is akin to the law, and companies have to abide by it.
The code states that all employers must take measures to determine the vaccination status of their workers. It also makes it harder to use Constitutional rights as a refusal to be vaccinated.
Rules around managing COVID-19 in the workplace:
Rapuleng, who is the director of an employment law practice, says the code is aimed at providing guidance, but not guidance that can simply be dismissed.
“The mere fact that it says employers should seek to accommodate employees who refuse or fail to vaccinate, states that there is room for employees who have legitimate grounds which maybe constitutional grounds to refuse to vaccinate, to be engaged by their employer and means to be found to accommodate them, but what it simply does now, it makes it difficult for employees to refuse to declare their COVID-19 status.”
Government maintaining some regulations
The Health Department’s Director-General Dr Sandile Buthelezi says government needs to maintain some COVID-19-related regulations should the country be faced with another wave of the pandemic.
The Department has published the proposed regulations under the National Health Act – focusing on the wearing of masks, vaccinations and travel – among other topics. The public comment period for the new regulations will close on the 15th of April. Dr Buthelezi says the latest proposals are expected to help manage the current or possible future pandemics.
“This virus, all of us, we cannot predict what it can do. We will be expecting the next wave not long from now. So we really want to ensure that we’ve got measures in place to manage this. Reverting to the State of Disaster is not the best thing that government wants to do. So, we want to use what we can to ensure that we are able to deal with any change – not only with COVID. Remember in the future we might have a worse epidemic so we should have some measures that are easy to implement and not have many processes to implement them.”
