Communications minister Mondli Gungubele has voiced concern over the negative impact that strike action at the State IT Agency (Sita) could have on service delivery.

Gungubele has urged all parties involved in ending the strike action to speed up negotiations.

“Minister Gungubele is calling upon both parties to find a speedy and amicable resolution to ensure that service delivery is not negatively affected,” the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

The department added that while the minister is concerned about the situation, the matter is outside his jurisdiction.

“Although the department has noted calls for the minister to intervene, it is important to note that this is a labour matter between the Public Servants Association (PSA), representing the employees, and Sita, as employer. The department cannot interfere.”

The union’s “total shutdown” of Sita, which began on Monday, intensified after it rejected a “unilateral” 5% wage hike offer. The offer is 0.5 percentage points higher than one previously made during negotiations. The PSA’s reason for rejecting the offer, it said, is “based on the initial instruction from members who indicated that they would not be accepting anything less than 7.5%”.

“The PSA has warned the employer (Sita) that strike action will be intensified across the country indefinitely,” it said in a statement. The PSA has encouraged its members to “converge at their workplace entrances and not report for duty”, even telling those who are working from home to do the same.

Disastrous consequences

PSA chief negotiator Zamani Dladla told TechCentral that prolonged strike action could have disastrous consequences for South Africa’s economy since its members are responsible for the upkeep of key IT infrastructure across multiple spheres of government.

“While the entire public sector is affected by the strike, the most critical departments are home affairs, Sassa, the national border systems and the SAPS national call centre, which is housed in one of Sita’s buildings,” said Dladla. “If any of these systems go down, nobody other than Sita employees will be able to resuscitate them.”

Dladla also said the payment system for government employees is at risk should negotiations not reach an amicable conclusion soon.

Read: Strike hits Sita, threatening public services

Sita, however, has assured the communications department that it has the situation firmly under control. “The department has been assured by Sita that plans are in place to ensure that key operations of the agency will be protected from any negative impact by this protest action,” the department said.