The Western Cape Department of Employment and Labour confirmed that several construction sites in the Southern Cape were closed as a result of a blitz this week.
Also read: George building collapse: Search and rescue efforts concludes after 260 hours
Since Monday, the department has visited between 100 and 150 construction sites, with five to six closed as of Wednesday.
This was in response to the devastating collapse of a partially built five-story building in George on May 6, which trapped several workers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, and Lesotho.
There were 81 workers on site at the time of the collapse, and 33 of them died.
The Garden Route District Municipality issued a media statement on May 17 stating that rescue and recovery operations for the building collapse lasted 260 hours.
The site was then classified as a crime scene and turned over to the police for formal investigation, who will then turn it over to the Department of Employment and Labour for their own investigation.
The Western Cape government also launched an investigation the day after the incident.
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According to Department of Labour Provincial Chief Inspector David Esau, one construction site has been closed due to a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
‘It is not within our mandate to have people arrested. It’s in our mandate to hand the documents or copies of permits and passports over to Home Affairs who will then do the verification and go forward with any arrests should they find anyone,’ Esau tol IOL.
‘When you close a site, you actually prohibit a site from continuing with their work until they have rectified what we call a life threatening situation. It could be anything from not having a COC or not having certain things in place and these things if they are not in place, can cause bodily harm to anybody.’
Esau stated that the exact number of construction sites that were closed would be announced on Monday.
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‘We are still in the process of concluding the project of this week in the Southern Cape. What we have uncovered is especially the issue around (illegal) foreigners in the construction sector and so we wanted to check, because the example, based on the George collapse has indicated to us that quite a number of (illegal) foreigners are working on the construction site and that’s the reason why we wanted to see if the other construction sites comply or not comply with the issue of migration. And then obviously the safety conditions on the construction site,’ Esau said.
‘It started on Monday because I felt it’s important, now that we are there busy with the investigation, to alert all companies that we need to comply with these kinds of laws because we’ve just seen the consequences of not complying.’
Esau claimed they had covered George, Mossel Bay, and Knysna.
Also read:
George building collapse: WCG investigation gains momentum, says Winde
Picture: Shivendu Shukla/Unsplash