"Our inspections and enforcement branch has seen very low compliance. Which means that employers must do more to ensure that their workers are safe," Nxesi told a media briefing of most of Cabinet's economics cluster.

He said 72 workplace inspections were conducted by the labour department on Monday and only 34 of the workplaces visited were complying with regulations on sanitising and protection of staff from infection.

The results of inspections carried out during the past two months while South Africa has been in a lockdown  equally were not good, he said.

"The cumulative picture we see from March 30 to May 30 is not positive. In that period a total of 332 prohibition notices were served. Which averages out to nine notices a day," he said.

In this period, a total of 3,844 workplace inspections were carried out and 2,116 employers were found to be compliant with the new health rules.

"1,724 failed to comply," the minister said, adding that it signalled that "this message has not embedded itself in the consciousness of many of our employers according to what we see in our statistics".

He cautioned that there was a risk of widespread failure to protect workers as some eight million more people returned to work from Monday, when level 3 of the lockdown will come into effect, allowing most of the economy to reopen.

"This situation is now compounded by the fact that under level 3, many more manual workers will return, often working for smaller, less well resourced employers."

In terms of the regulations pertaining to level 3, every workplace must have a Covid-19 safety committee and plan.

Nxesi said workers should be represented on these committees. The department will rely heavily on trade unions and shop stewards to monitor implementation of hygiene measures and where these fall short, to report the matter to the department.

He stressed that staff could not be forced to work in unsanitary conditions, and if they were fired for refusing to report to duty for this reason, they should approach the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.

The CCMA reopened its doors on 18 May.

Asked about the range of consequences errant employers could face, Nxesi said these could ultimately include criminal charges if their refusal to adhere to the regulations resulted in workers becoming infected with Covid-19.

"Sometimes we can lay criminal charges against employers who are forcing the workers to do wrong things, once the workers have been infected... it is criminal to violate the law."

African News Agency