Mpumalanga government targets mining sector as COVID fight intensifies further

More than 8 000 workers at Sasol are expected to be vaccinated this week ahead of the maintenance shutdown at the power station.

Mpumalanga premier Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane launched the vaccination site at Sasol in Secunda on Monday.

She raised concerns about elderly people who are not registering for the vaccination rollout in the Govan Mbeki Municipality.

Secunda is one of the COVID-19 hotspots in the province, currently with 11 696 positive cases.

Sasol Mass Vaccine centre site is one of the over 100 sites established by the provincial government to assist in the inoculation of citizens.

This site will be targeting mostly employees from Sasol and other sectors to vaccinate many people within a short space of time.

Some of the employees were excited to receive their first jab today.

Sasol partnered with government following the president’s call that private partnership is important to fight this pandemic.

Sasol’s Deputy president, Simon Baloyi, says the company is committed to fight the scourge.

“Today we are going to vaccinated around eight thousand people it might take us the whole week but we have planned to vaccinate eight thousand but will keep the mass vaccination centre open from the Sasol perceptive, we did initial already put strict measures  to protect our employees against COVID. We even had to send our employees that can work from home so that they work from home; we split our shift system  to allow people to work not to be at work at the same time,” explains Baloyi.

The province of Mpumalanga consists of over four million people and over 350 000 people have already been vaccinated.

Premier Mtshweni-Tsipane says the statistic shows that many people have not yet vaccinated. She says it is important to mobilise communities to vaccinate.

“We must go all out mobilise our communities to go and do what is right  because at this point in time we are progressing very well but not at the pace in which one would have expected far  better but due to vaccination phobia that is there within our communities it derailed the progress that we are making” add the premier.

Mtshweni-Tsipane says they are working hard to vaccinate many people across the province, hence they are now targeting the mining sector.

“We have already started with engagement with  all our mining partners  who are operating within Mpumalanga to say please open your doors we are available as Mpumalanga government to walk in there to rollout the massive vaccination  within your employees  we are happy with the response which was shown upon us by this mining sectors as you can see today we are here in Sasol to make sure  the employees here those that are not  vaccinated as yet  they get vaccination not just them but also contractors that are working  in this company will be also be vaccinating.”

Later this week, the premier will visit farms in Mkhondo to encourage farmdwellers and workers to vaccinate.

Over 8 000 Sasol employees and service providers to be vaccinated: