The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) on Friday signed a settlement agreement with the minister of Social Development and the management of the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) to officially suspend its workers' strike at the grants agency.
Both parties agreed to find a solution to end the conflict.
Nehawu said they would end the strike if the department suspended the rolling out of the contentious biometric system, pending further tests.
The General Secretary Zola Saphetha said members were happy with the agreement and have mandated the union to sign it.
Workers will be back in the office on the 15th of October.
Nehawu began the strike at Sassa offices across the country on Wednesday to protest the use of the biometric system to process social grants disbursements following a migration from Cash Paymaster Services to the South African Post Office.
The union has complained that the new system has introduced a raft of challenges which do not form part of the job description for administrative workers and for which they were neither trained nor compensated, adding that this migration has also opened the system up to easy manipulation, fraud and corruption.
- African News Agency (ANA),
