Johannesburg | Tuesday
THE government was on Tuesday assessing whether it needed to hire private lawyers to represent it in pending court cases in the face of a countrywide salary strike by state attorneys, the Justice Department said.
”We have instructed all our offices to determine whether there are urgent cases which will need us to assign private lawyers. This will obviously cost us money, but we are prepared to do it because we don’t want the public to suffer as a result of the strike,” department representative Kaiser Kganyago said in Pretoria.
Less urgent cases would be postponed to later dates, he said.
According to departmental estimates, about half of the country’s 250 State attorneys were on strike. Of the other half, most were on a go-slow.
Kganyago said the strike would have no visible impact.
”We should be able to postpone most of our cases, and the courts are running as normal.”
The Public Servants’ Association (PSA) said the protest was being supported by about 85 percent of State attorneys.
A 100% stay-away was reported in Bloemfontein. In Cape Town 14 of a total of 16 state attorneys were on strike, as were 23 out of 31 in Johannesburg, said PSA general manager Anton Louwrens.
State attorneys in Durban and Pretoria were to have decided on Monday whether to join the strike, but he had not yet received feedback, Louwrens said. They were in their offices on Monday, but refused to accept new cases.
State attorneys contend there has been a continuous decline in their salaries since 1988.
Some were lagged behind by up to 50% compared to other professional occupations in the Justice Department.
Louwrens said the strike was set to continue until at least Friday, unless the department came up with proposals for its resolution.
Kganyago, however, said: ”Even if we wanted to, there is nothing the department can do”.
Salary matters, he said, were determined by the public service bargaining council, not the department.
”They declared a dispute against the department, but we maintain the dispute was declared against the wrong people. We have no jurisdiction to discuss salaries with them,” Kganyago said.
He added a committee was set up early this year to investigate the salaries of all justice department officials.
”We acknowledge their salaries are not on par with those of their counterparts in the private sector. There is a problem. But that is why the committee was set up.”
Louwrens said the strike would be reviewed on Friday to determine if it should go ahead.
Kganyago stressed that a principle of ”no work no pay” would apply to striking workers. – Sapa