CATEGORISE COVID-19 AS AN OCCUPATIONAL DISEASE

As of Monday, July 6, 2020, high school educators throughout the country received the tag: frontline workers.

Many an educator had their hands on the deck, availing themselves as health care workers: scanning workers’ temperatures, filling the strenuous screening tool and sanitiSing learners at the point of entry in the school before the typical line of duty commenced; that of facilitating the process of effective teaching and learning. This week began on a higgledy-piggledy status in schools with a number of learning institutions visibly not equipped to welcome learners and educators back since schools were closed in the wake of the COVID-19 scare. March 17, 2020, the Prime Minister (Ambrose Dlamini0 invoked Section 29 of the Disaster Management Act No.1 of 2006 to declare a National Emergency.

Reopening

The subsequent reopening of schools received varying sentiments and reservations from a plethora of quarters with the SNAT filing an urgent application in the Industrial Court on same.
Two months ago, April 28, 2020, on the occasion of International Workers Memorial Day 2020, the global trade union movement (Council of Global Unions), which includes the Education International 9 (EI), where the SNAT affiliates, called upon governments and occupational health and safety bodies around the world to recognise SARS-CoV-2 as an occupational hazard, and COVID-19 as an occupational disease. We unreservedly concur.

With a third of the population around the world currently living under various forms of lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, millions of workers, including those in health and social care, emergency services, agriculture, food and retail, transport, education, infrastructure and construction work and other public services, continue to work hard to keep society functioning. Yet the vast majority are doing so without the comprehensive protection required when exposed to a recognised occupational disease caused by a biological agent. This poses a profound risk to workers, their families and the communities in which they live.

The global Unions posited that workers [including teachers in Eswatini] urgently need official recognition of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus as an occupational hazard. Like any threat, it is the responsibility of employers to protect their workers from it as far as practicable.

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