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SowetanLive reports that a group of 50 cash-in-transit employees who have tested positive for Covid-19 are blaming their company for being responsible for their infections.
They claim the management of Fidelity Cash Solutions has been sitting on information for four weeks that one of their colleagues who recently died was infected with the coronavirus. One of the employees stated: "They kept it all a secret and didn't want us to test, so we all took it upon ourselves [to go and test] and on Thursday we took three quantums [taxis] and went to get tested. I got my results on Friday afternoon which came back positive, they told me to isolate for 14 days. All of us who went to get tested are positive, only two were negative. We were about 50." Their claim, which the company has refuted, is that they all got infected by a recently deceased colleague who worked as a security guard at the Hermanstad branch in Pretoria. Upon learning their status, the company apparently decided to dock the employees’ salaries while they were isolating. Following Sowetan inquiries, the company for the first time on Monday sent messages to the staffers, in which a regional manager said "the company has empathy and sympathy towards your current reported Covid-19 status". But she reiterated that salaries would be docked and indicated that if official confirmation of results was not submitted then absence would be regarded as unpaid leave. If the employees failed to contact their regional manager, absence would be treated as “abscontion”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Kgothatso Madisa at SowetanLive
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