BLOEMFONTEIN – More than 500 employees at the Mangaung Correctional Centre affiliated to the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcu) have been locked out of the facility outside Bloemfontein. This followed the take-over of operation by the Department of Correctional services effective from 1 July, despite a Labour Court order judgement that the department also absorb the workers who worked over 25 years at the facility with full benefits. These are workers that worked at the public-private partnership with G4S group since it took over in 2001 June.

The department changed the name of facility to Grootvlei Maximum overnight at – midnight last night. There is a heavy police presence at the gate of the facility where convicted murderer and rapist Thabo Bester escaped in 2022.

Popcru raised major concerns regarding job security for 500 G4S-employed guards and filed dispute in the Labour Court. Subsequently, a Labour Court ruling ordered the state to absorb these workers with full benefits, a decision that the DCS has lost on appeal. The department’s administration announced early in June that it had advertised a total of 668 centre-based posts, professional, specialist and artisan positions – seemingly to replace Popcru-affiliated employees who were employed for the duration of the PPP contract, which began on 30 June 2001.