Al-Qalam 
[Photo source - Africa news agency]
President Cyril Ramaphosa this week signed a bill that protects Domestic in terms of amendment to the Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Amendment Act.
From an Islamic ethical perspective, this law heightens our obligations towards those we employ at home. Specifically we are obliged to care for them by ensuring their personal safety and their health. This is what COIDA does. It requires employers to become proactive towards their domestic workers from a multi disciplinary perspective which isn’t novel.
Essentially what the amendment does is that it gives effect to a 2020 decision of the Constitutional Court judgment in the matter of *Mahlangu and Another v Minister of Labour and Others [2020] ZACC 24; (19 November 2020* in which the Court declared parts of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act unconstitutional.
The court found that the denial of benefits to individuals employed as domestic workers (and to their families) under COIDA was unconstitutional. The court relied upon Sections 9, 10 and 27(1)(c) of the South African Constitution and South Africa’s obligations under regional and international law.
Domestic workers employed in private households were hitherto excluded from the definition of “employee” and the effective denial of compensation to such workers who contracted diseases or suffered disablement, injuries or death in the course of their employment. They are now protected.
Under the amended legislation the livelihood of workers affected by occupational injuries or diseases is also protected by introducing a multi-disciplinary employee-based process of rehabilitation and reintegration of injured employees or employees who contracted occupational diseases.
Employers are now required to exhaust all rehabilitation and reintegration processes before laying off an employee.
Saber Ahmed Jazbhay
Legal Practitioner
10 April 2023
19 Ramadaan 1444
