The Gauteng government has issued landlords who own the 13 properties leased by the province with compliance notices in a bid to improve on the Occupation Health and Safety (OHS) of all employees working in the buildings.
Infrastructure Development MEC Tasneem Motara said her department is the custodian of the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) fixed assets under the Government Immovable Assets.
Motara said in 2017 the department initiated a project to do condition assessments on all occupied GPG buildings.
“The assessment was completed at the end of August 2018, a couple of weeks before the unfortunate Bank of Lisbon fire incident and tragedy happened during September 2018.
“Stemming from the report, affected buildings were voluntarily evacuated. We undertook emergency OHS compliance activities such as clearing fire escape routes, ensuring that signage was put up and visible, air and water quality assessments, as well as training of staff from various departments on OHS,” she said.
Motara said they have finalised the procurement of office accommodation for the departments of health and human settlements.
The health department has already moved while the human settlements department will be settled by the end of November.
She said the roads and transport department has requested to be accommodated in one premises, they are currently occupying two.
“GPG will continue that their staff are trained and up to date with safety measures required in occupied buildings. We are committed to house our tenants in fully compliant, safe and reliable facilities so that service delivery provided by GPG will not be adversely affected at any point.
“…. the focus of Gauteng Provincial Government is to shift away from developing new infrastructure to ensuring that existing infrastructure is sufficiently provisioned for regarding maintenance and upkeep,” she said.
