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Workers union, Solidarity, was gearing up to take its case of alleged race discrimination against the Department of Tourism’s Tourism Relief Fund to the Constitutional Court, said union CEO, Dr Dirk Hermann.
This comes after the Northern Gauteng High Court ruled last week that the Department of Tourism’s decision to use race as criterion for granting relief from the Tourism Relief Fund was not “unlawful”.
Late on Thursday afternoon (April 28) Justice Jody Kollapen ruled that the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment criterion did not represent an unfair advantage for some candidates over others based on race but rather that it had the effect of providing those candidates with a head start.
However, Solidarity argued that the COVID-19 pandemic did not discriminate against its victims on the basis of race and that it was therefore immoral of government to offer relief on these grounds.
“It is not only white business owners who are affected but also all employees in the industry, of whom two out of every three are black. Hunger and distress know no colour,” said Hermann.
The Department of Tourism’s defence was that it was legally obliged to apply B-BEE codes to the applications for relief, “regardless of the consequences”, a matter the Minister of Tourism, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, reiterated in a tourism recovery webinar last week.
“It is sad that Solidarity now has to turn to the Constitutional Court because government is set to continue with the discriminatory race criterion it imposed to qualify for emergency relief. This action by government cannot be justified in any way, and therefore Solidarity will not leave it at that,” Hermann pointed out.
The Institute of Race Relations, along with the Democratic Alliance, are also opposed to what they term “race-based policies contained in the government’s criteria” for the various relief funds it announced to help small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs).
Tourism is one of the sectors hardest hit by the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic with Kubayi-Ngubane launching a R200 million (€9.67m) Tourism Relief Fund last month to provide assistance to SMMEs by way of a once-off capped grant of R50 000 (€2 418) per qualifying entity.
The fund is for tourism establishments such as resort properties, B&Bs, guest houses, lodges and backpackers, restaurants (not attached to hotels), conference venues (not attached to hotels), car-rental companies, tour operators and travel agents.
Kubayi-Ngubane told Tourism Update last week that her department had received more than 10 000 applications for the Tourism Relief Fund, confirming, however, that to date, none of the funds has been paid to applicants because of the legal issues around this.
Source: tourismupdate.co.za
