The national office of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) in Harrison Street, Johannesburg, was damaged by a fire on Wednesday, CCMA director Nerine Kahn said on Thursday.
Kahn told the Mail & Guardian Online that the cause of the fire was not known.
”We are not sure what caused the fire but we were told that it might be as a result of power surges,” she said.
The fire damaged all power cables in the building, resulting in the national office and its call centre not being operational. More importantly, though, the CCMA regional offices were not able to process cases electronically or receive emails.
”We have a recovery plan that includes dealing with cases manually [but] it is a huge strain because it takes too much time … and there is a huge blockage,” said Kahn.
All regional offices were operational and continued to receive case referrals and conduct scheduled hearings. Kahn said there must be delays expected as a result of the fire. ”We will proceed with existing cases because we prepare them a week in advance, so they are there and ready, but people that come to open new cases will have to wait in queues a little longer.”
The CCMA expected to be up and running by next week Wednesday. Kahn said the CCMA was coping. ”We can carry on this way for another five days or so but if the problem is not solved, after that we might experience some serious problems,” she said.
As a result of the fire, the CCMA might move its IT equipment to one of its regional offices, which are two blocks away.