The R500m budget cut at the CCMA has plunged the statutory body into crisis, says a Business Day report. The Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO) has claimed the budget cuts have decreased the CCMA’s capacity to deliver basic services.

The CWAO said security guards, touts and con artists had been exploiting workers with inquiries and charging up to R900 to make copies of and complete dispute referral forms.

The cash-strapped CCMA has had its budget of R1bn cut by R99m, with steeper cuts of R170m and R231m pencilled in over the next two years of the medium-term expenditure framework.

From April to December 2020, the CCMA said it received 985 large-scale referrals compared to 555 in the same period in 2019, implying a bigger workload needing more resources.

CWAO tweeted last week: ‘Want to know what the (CCMA) budget cuts mean? Today we found that the CCMA Benoni has effectively outsourced its dispute referral system to a corner store/Internet café. Workers now pay R10 at the Internet cafe to refer a case online. It is next door to the CCMA!’

Open CCMA Campaign spokesperson Harry May said the CCMA responded, saying it would have ‘no alternative but to take further action necessary against CWAO’ for defamation should the tweet not be removed within seven days.

The post remains active.

‘The irony of the CCMA’s legal threat is that the real situation facing workers is much worse than revealed in the tweet,’ said May.

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