After vowing not to budge on its offer of a 7-per-cent wage increase for civil servants South Africa's government came back Monday with a dramatically improved offer aimed at ending a six-day old strike. The state was now offering the country's 1.3 million public sector workers 8.5 per cent more pay, only just short of the workers' demands of an 8.6-per-cent pay hike, government spokesman Themba Maseko told a media briefing, according to dpa. Maseko maintained that the revised offer was not new - but that government had delayed in communicating the offer to trade unions and the media. The additional 1.5 per cent consisted of a "pay progression" which had been intended to be performance-related but would be automatically paid out to around 90 per cent of public servants, because no performance benchmarks had been set, he said. What had not changed was the government's offer of a 700 rand monthly housing allowance, which falls short of the unions' demands of 1,000 rand per worker. It was unclear whether unions would accept the deal. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, to which most of the unions are affiliated, had yet to respond. Last week, Public Service Minister Richard Baloyi had said the government's capacity to offer pay increases was already "exhausted" and that it would already be hard pressed to find the extra 5 billion rand (694 million dollars) needed to cover a 7-per-cent increase. The about-turn comes as nurses began returning to work after the state obtained a court injunction at the weekend ordering essential service workers to return to work. Nurses fall under that category. At Helen Joseph hospital in Johannesburg around 30 per cent of nurses showed up for work on Monday, doctors said. Doctors have mostly remained on the job countrywide. Some nurses and teachers however said they still feared attack if they crossed picket lines - despite the military being deployed to help protect 53 hospitals in seven of nine provinces. Last week gangs of striking workers roamed through hospitals and schools in Johannesburg and Durban threatening healthcare workers and teachers who dared defy the strike call. Public support for the strike plummeted as patients requiring urgent care were turned away from hospitals and dozens of premature babies were abandoned in one ward before being rescued after a day by a private clinic. Although no figure has been put on the number of fatalities caused by the strike, doctors say there have been several preventable deaths. Monday saw renewed clashes between police and demonstrators, with police using rubber bullets and or water cannon to break up protests in Johannesburg, Durban and the diamond mining town of Kimberley. Some 67 people were arrested for rioting. The state has vowed to take a tough tack with the demonstrators.
