HIV and AIDS hit SA businesses

The study, conducted among 1006 companies in the manufacturing, retail, wholesale, motor trade, building and construction sectors, found that 9% of respondents indicated     that HIV/AIDS already had a significant adverse impact on their business, while 43 % envisage a negative impact in five years’€™ time.

Dr Leighton McDonald, spokesperson for the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (SABCOHA) said ‘€œHIV is undoubtedly a bottom line for business as it impacts on production costs and consumer markets.’€

According McDonald more than a third of the companies surveyed indicated that HIV and AIDS had reduced labour productivity or increased absenteeism and raised the cost of employee benefits. Some 30 % reported higher labour turnover rates; 27 % indicated that they had lost experience and skills, while 24 % incurred recruitment and training costs due to the epidemic.

‘€œGiven that only 8 % of all the companies surveyed expect to be able to pass some of these HIV/AIDS-related costs on to consumers by increasing their selling process, it is not surprising that so many reported that the epidemic is having an adverse impact on profits,’€ he said.

Dr McDonald said results from the survey suggest that most companies in South Africa had failed to respond to the epidemic.

 ‘€œOnly a quarter of all the firms surveyed had implemented a formal HIV/AIDS policy, while less than a fifth have a voluntary counselling and testing programme, provide care, treatment and support workers,’€ said Mc Donald.

He said employers are doing slightly better on the softer interventions that require less resources, such as workplace awareness programmes.

‘€œOverall, 41 % of respondents indicated that they have implemented an HIV/AIDS awareness programme,’€ he said.

According to SABCOHA, the response to the epidemic needs to be speeded up.

‘€œIt is our hope that the results from this survey will assist the private sector in recognising the business case for further action against HIV/AIDS in the workplace and beyond’€, McDonald added.

The survey, released last week, is the largest on the impact of HIV/AIDS on South African business to date. It was conducted by the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) during October and November. The full report will be published in January 2004.

     

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