More than half of employment equity reports in KwaZulu - Natal reflect errors

An alarming 75 percent of Employment Equity (EE) Reports submitted to the Department in Kwazulu - Natal was identified with errors after the reports were reviewed.

Labour Department officials at the Provincial Office in Durban completed the capturing of 187 EE reports that were submitted for the 2007 reporting period from 129 large employers and 58 small employers in the Province. Of these, a whopping 141 letters were sent out to employers for submitting reports with errors.

The Employment Equity Act, No. 55 of 1998 requires all large employers with 150 and more employees to submit their first report within six months of being designated and thereafter annually on the first working day of October.

Smaller employers with fewer than 150 are required to submit their first report within twelve months of being designated and thereafter on the first working day of October of every year that ends with an even number.  For the 2007 reporting period up to the end of December, the Department was still receiving reports by post and by hand and as such most of the employers did not meet the deadline for submission.

Some of the errors picked up during the capturing of the reports relates to the use of wrong formats and incorrect calculations, incomplete sections where companies left blank spaces when completing the income differential statements or did not complete this at all.The period of the EE plan was also omitted in most cases by employers. The changing of trading names without any attachments to the reports received was also identified as a serious error in the review process.

Error letters sent out to employers stipulated that the reports be corrected and re-submitted to the department within 7 days of receipt of the notification.

Employers are urged to access their reports online at www.labour.gov.za to correct the errors as failure to re-submit the reports on the specified date will be deemed as not to have reported at all.

All employers who fail to submit their EE report to the department may be subjected to the enforcement process as prescribed in the Employment Equity Act and a recommendation to prosecute may be instituted against such defaulters in the Labour Court.