Volume 10 No 4 - June 2001

Beatrix mine disaster

Trade union news

Black economic empowerment
Participating in change
Bitter taste in cup of tea
Makes banks serve the people
Child labour uncovered in South Africa

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has been much debated recently, with the publication of the Black Economic Empowerment Commission's report and various changes in the ownership of shares in 'black empowerment companies'.
COSATU's ExCo has been debating the question of BEE and this is a summary of their main conclusions.

BEE should not just mean the enrichment of a few black individuals but the empowerment of the black majority, as part of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

For BEE to make sense for the majority of our people, the emphasis must be on blacks as a whole, though dealing with discrimination may ultimately lead to the development of a new black bourgeoisie.

The fundamental objective of the NDR is the liberation of black people in general, and African people in particular, from national domination and economic exploitation. It must also address the particular forms of oppression faced by women
.
The NDR is:


Radical transformation of society is essential to ensure that the bulk of the oppressed majority benefit from liberation. As the ANC's 1969 Strategy and Tactics emphasised:
"In our country - more than any other part of the oppressed world - it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of wealth and the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation."

The NDR requires racial, gender and class oppression to be seen in an integrated way. BEE must go beyond a change in the complexion of capital, leaving South Africa one of the most inequitable societies in the world. It must be planned around the NDR's broad social and economic aims, to ensure more equality in incomes and access to assets and greater democracy in the economy and state.

Achieving this requires an economic development strategy designed to meet the needs of the majority and create employment, including:


Most studies suggest that since 1994 there has been virtually no change in the overall inequality in incomes and wealth, but that some of the formerly oppressed joined big capital and the top levels of the state, leading to increased differentiation within the black population.

Persistent inequality reflects the highly concentrated ownership and low skills levels which still characterise the economy. Efforts to improve the social wage by extending social services and housing for the majority have been counteracted by the large-scale loss of formal jobs and declining government spending between 1996 and 1999.

Since the late 1980s lower-graded jobs have been shed by the tens of thousands. Informal employment expanded, although since this sector generally pays badly, its growth does little to enhance equality in incomes and wealth.

With the transition to democracy, the public sector became one of the main areas of black power. Yet it has been progressively weakened since 1994 by declining real budgets after 1996, the full or partial privatisation of parastatals and other assets and the introduction of private competition in infrastructure provision.

Meanwhile, despite rapid movements, the top levels of administration in the state sector remain disproportionately white. In 2000, white men constituted some 55% of senior management in the public service.

· Progress towards BEE - as measured by improvements in overall equity and access to wealth - has been painfully slow. To achieve greater success in the future, BEE must form part of the NDR's reconstruction and development strategy and transform society to increase the majority's incomes, wealth and social power

Toward a new growth path

To create jobs and open space for smaller capital means restructuring the economy to make it more labour-intensive and enhancing our capacity to meet the basic needs of the majority better by producing both goods and services more efficiently.

To improve income equality requires an expansion in quality jobs. Fostering employment creation in the informal sector by relaxing labour standards will buy prosperity for one section of our people at the cost of others.

Employment creation must emerge from shifts in economic structure, combined with a strong acceleration in skills development. That requires a review of the education system so it provides adequate education for all our people. Inequalities persist because of:

Increasing equality in ownership

A key way to enhance the black majority's access to assets is to strengthen the public sector and make sure it meets developmental aims. COSATU rejects the use of BEE to justify privatisation and outsourcing.

A second way is to extend household, community and economic infrastructure in poor communities, where currently, electricity, water and housing are often supplied at too low a level to provide the anticipated basis for generating incomes or improving productivity.

Electricity is often only enough to run electric lights, not for cooking or for the use of equipment for home-base production. Moreover the latest budget saw a cut of 40% in the funding for electrification.

The introduction of public-private partnerships and private management for municipal services seems likely to militate further against provision to the poor. It hands this critical function to private providers who have little interest in serving those who cannot pay.

Co-operatives form an important way to increase the majority's wealth, while enhancing equity. They permit worker ownership in a variety of areas. Consumer co-ops can begin to ensure that the retail sector meets basic needs.

We need a package of support measures related to incentives, marketing, access to credit and training and an appropriate legislative framework.

A reform of the financial sector is needed to ensure that our people have access to banking services and credit, and that the banks do more for small-scale and poor customers and end the systematic discrimination that currently pervades the industry.

Small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) should be supported to reduce the domination of big capital and open opportunities for smaller enterprise. Land reform for example is a critical way of getting assets to black farmers and farm workers.

Community mobilisation should empower people to take action for themselves. We must review all government programmes to ensure they encourage community action, by opening up space for both participation in decision-making and action by stakeholders.

Support for community mobilisation does not mean people do not have a right to demand that government act to end poverty and create jobs, but government programmes must be designed to strengthen popular direction and control.

BEE, capital and the state
The most difficult questions for COSATU arise over the extent to which this strategy requires state support for private black capital. Some in the ANC argue that integrating black business will lead to more patriotic capital, which identifies its long-term prosperity with broad-based economic growth.

Certainly no one could argue for maintaining white domination of big companies. But we cannot support measures that only work toward integration of management and ownership in existing large companies.

One option is to oppose measures that will only enrich individuals, in favour of more collective ownership, through the public sector and co-ops, more participatory management and flatter work organisation and labour rights.

More difficult questions relate to the growth of SMMEs, specifically on labour rights and working conditions and more broadly to their potential to create employment.
Some in government and capital argue that protecting labour rights, especially around dismissal, is a major burden on small-scale producers. The Department of Finance makes this argument strongly in the Budget Review 2001.

Yet virtually no study of small-scale and micro enterprise supports this view. If black empowerment is a strategy to benefit the majority, enriching a minority of employers at the cost of their workers is not acceptable.

A further problem with growth in SMMEs emerges when it occurs at the expense of employment and production in larger companies, through outsourcing or deregulation that lets in smaller producers and new technologies that reduce the scale of production.

For labour, these developments can pose a difficult choice. Typically larger companies provide more secure and better-paid employment. Micro producers may generate only very low, survivalist incomes, even exploiting their family's unpaid labour. They may have no real prospects for developing substantially, because they cannot compete with larger companies in skills, technology and marketing.

Yet the growth of smaller companies should ultimately help reduce the concentration of economic power and contribute to the restructuring of the economy.

The DTI has argued that "a critical component of a strategy for socio-economic empowerment has to be black economic empowerment that is designed to strengthen the capitalist class by increasing the number of enterprises started and owned by black persons. We cannot escape this conclusion. This is not to weaken the working class; on the contrary it is to strengthen it."

But what is the longer-term impact on labour, consumers and capital? The emergence of small bakeries has led to reduced production and employment by larger companies but we do not know how it affects the number employed, the price and quality of baked goods or access to them in rural areas.

Even if it has led to lower prices and greater accessibility, does that gain reflect improved production or only greater use of poorly paid workers or unpaid family labour?
A shift to smallholdings through land reform has long been a demand of the democratic movement. But unless managed carefully, it can displace farm workers, rather than integrate them into development and can lead to worsening conditions for both family and employed labour.

The proposal to outsource public-service functions in the name of supporting SMMEs, including co-ops, would effectively strengthen small-scale capital at the cost of the state and public servants. Similar arguments apply to privatising parts of electricity production.

Any measures to support SMMEs in the private sectors must assess the impact on labour, consumers and economic power. These issues will arise when it comes to government procurement and BEE. Where a small company can meet government's needs as well or better than a large one, without reducing labour standards or employment, it should get the contract. Problems arise however when the smaller companies fall short in any of these areas.

Procurement policies in support of BEE must:

 

By Dovhani Tshilande, SAAPAWU, Northern Province

The next time you sit down for a refreshing cup of tea, spare a thought for the workers who pick the leaves. The SA Agricultural, Plantation and Allied Workers' Union (SAAPAWU) is heading for a serious conflict with Sapekoe (Pty) Ltd, who are paying starvation wages to their 3 800 farm workers.

This tea company, which has been bought by a British company, Linton Park, owns eight farming operations in the Northern province and two in KwaZulu Natal and employs 3 800 workers.

The workers earn as little as R412 a month. The union is demanding a rise to R750 or a 15% increase, whichever is greater, and a 13th cheque. But in the first round of negotiations which started on 15 May, the employer made a final offer of 6% across the board.

Sapekoe has a 'statement of values' which commits the company:


Yet they are not prepared to address the past injustices that have left farmworkers as the lowest paid workers in South Africa. They maintain what they call the 'normal practice' of any industry, to give increases based on the market-related increases on wages. But when wages are already at poverty level, a 6% increase is next to nothing
They are not paying market-related wages but starvation wages. What happened to the "high ethical standards?"

 

Participating in change: Labour's involvement in the Workplace Challenge Project

By David Jarvis and Gary Phillips

The Workplace Challenge (WPC) Project, initiated by the National Labour, Economic and Development Council (NEDLAC), is a nationally co-ordinated attempt to introduce shop floor level co-determination in manufacturing firms.
It is funded through the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), as one of its supply-side support measures aimed at making South African companies more efficient.

Co-determination: Is a term used to describe a situation where management and workers decide together on the way a plant or department should be run. WPC commits participating companies to negotiate restructuring through a shop floor committee made up of equal numbers of shop stewards and managers.

WPC is run in provincial manufacturing sectors where there is sufficient interest from business and labour. The National Productivity Institute (NPI) co-ordinates the project on behalf of NEDLAC and the DTI. The NPI appoints a sector manager for each participating sector. The sector manager is responsible for ensuring that the WPC rules are followed and that the process runs smoothly.

The sector manager is also tasked with ensuring that the funds made available through WPC are used for activities that will assist manufacturers become more competitive while not affecting workers negatively.

At shop-floor level, capacity building workshops are held for shop stewards, supervisors and management. At the completion of the shop-floor restructuring process the participating firms are supposed to allow other firms in their sector to learn from the process at their plants.

Restructuring at shop-floor level is facilitated by consultants, accountable to the shop-floor committee. The committee chooses a consultant (or consultants) who assists them overcome obstacles to improved company performance and workplace democracy. Participating companies contribute 25% of the consultants' bills as their contribution to the process, while WPC pays for the rest.

At this stage, the provincially based sectors listed below are included in WPC: The shop-floor restructuring processes in some of the sectors are complete, while others are still under way.
Completed


Nearing completion


To be completed by March 2002


To ensure that shop stewards participate effectively in the shop-floor committees, labour representatives at NEDLAC negotiated that the shop stewards be given a three-day workshop on restructuring issues. The Trade Union Research Project (TURP) was commissioned to conduct the training. A total of 16 workshops covering nearly 200 shop stewards have been conducted.


The capacity building also dealt with issues of concern shop steward had about entering into restructuring negotiations. The shop stewards' main concerns included:


The WPC argues that the process of restructuring "starts with workers". Although the shop stewards are equal partners in the shop floor committee in theory, shop stewards have found that it is difficult for them to be equal participants in decision-making. Their participation has sometimes been weakened by a lack of capacity and sometimes by a lack of knowledge about the rights the WPC process offered them.


It needs to be investigated whether shop stewards were able to ensure that their concerns and proposals were taken on board in the restructuring process at participating plants.


It was also difficult for shop stewards to participate when restructuring led to negative impacts on workers. In spite of their commitment to WPC, some found that management were not bringing their part to the negotiating table, or the shop stewards would find themselves negotiating changes that resulted in work speed-up or other negative consequences without benefits for their members.


The effect of WPC on the performance of companies has yet to be proven. Further, it is unclear how many other companies have seen it necessary to learn from the participating companies and introduce similar improvement measures.


It seems that in spite of the rights and conditions set by WPC to guarantee a co-determinist approach, and in spite of the commitment from shop stewards, it has proved difficult for unions to make real gains. Unions need to investigate how shop stewards at participating plants exploited, or failed to exploit, opportunities opened up by the WPC.

David Jarvis is a senior researcher at NALEDI; he was involved in WPC Labour Capacity Building while based at TURP. Gary Phillips is research co-ordinator at TURP. The authors write in their personal capacities.

 

By Mazibuko Jara, SACP Media Spokesperson

The South African Communist Party (SACP) is to step up its Campaign for the Transformation and Diversification of the Financial Sector, under the slogan Make Banks Serve the People!

"Despite the massive resources of the bosses," says Blade Nzimande, SACP General Secretary, at a consultative meeting on 16 May 2001, "nothing will stand in our way to build an economy based on the people."

Banks for the rich

Banks and the financial sector in South Africa today command enormous financial resources, most of which come from our people - from their burial societies, stokvels, mogodisano, workers' wages and government money.

But they are unaccountable capitalists. They hoard our people's money and savings then use them to finance the greed and luxuries of the, mainly white, rich minority. Their prime driving motive remains profit maximisation rather than investment in social progress. They tell us about needing to adhere to international standards, whilst applying the lowest standards for the local population. Their practices continue to foster poverty among black people, entrenching racial inequalities and racism itself.

Workers and other poor people are either denied the right to open an account at all or have huge amounts deducted in charges. Now the Banking Council is reported to be considering raising customer charges to cover the costs from a new Reserve Bank requirement on cash reserves. The will hit millions of poor and working people who use the banking system and perpetuate the exclusion of more than 20 million South Africans who are outside the banking system.

The SACP condemns this move and calls on the Banking Council and the Reserve Bank to ensure that these costs are not passed on to customers.
Absa has already increased its bank charges this year, hitting hard at those earning less than R3000 per month. It is the largest bank used by the poor and working people.

Absa has also announced it will be closing 50 branches this year, bringing to 500 the number of branches shut since 1998. Since 1992 when United, Trust, Volkskas and Allied Banks were combined to make up Absa, the total staff have been cut from 44 000 to 34 000. These closures will hit also hardest at the poor who do not have transport to alternative branches.

These moves confirm that commercial banks are only interested in maximising profits at the expense of the majority of our people and belie verbal commitments made by banks to social investment.

They confirm the need to intensify the SACP-led campaign to make banks serve the people and to move speedily to ensure that we have democratically controlled, public sector banks meeting the needs of the people.

Our challenge

The key challenge for the progressive forces in South Africa's transition is to build an active, national democratic state, with a coherent, developmental economic policy that creates jobs and eradicates poverty.

The government says all the macro-economic 'fundamentals' are in place, including a budget deficit below government's economic framework targets. But the anticipated flows of foreign direct investment have not arrived. Indeed thanks to major liberalisation measures, there has been a net outflow of capital.

Economic growth and development must be based, firstly, on the mobilisation of domestic capital resources (including public, parastatal, social and private domestic capital) around a coherent industrial strategy, which must encompass the core manufacturing sectors, mining, agriculture, services and the 'new economy'.

It must ensure coherence between, and initiatives in, national, provincial and local government and there must be sector-by-sector strategic and spatial planning.
As part of this integrated industrial strategy we need a far-reaching restructuring and diversification of the financial sector.

But we cannot simply rely on government alone. Another big challenge is to mobilise our people to counter-balance the power and pressure of capital on our government. Mass support will strengthen our government and encourage it to implement a socio-economic transformation that will benefit the working people and the poor.

The economic debate will ultimately not be resolved in the boardrooms but through the strategic deployment of the mass power of the working class and working class communities. We need to mobilise our people to struggle for a people's economy in which they effectively participate and which is increasingly oriented towards meeting their needs.

Red October

This is why in October 2000, the SACP launched the Campaign for the Transformation and Diversification of the Financial Sector. Through 14 marches and five pickets the SACP, with the support of our allies mobilised more than 40 000 people to march and picket across the country on 21 October last year. We submitted memoranda to government and the Banking Council of South Africa, demanding:

The NEDLAC summit has now been agreed and should be held before the end of June.

The Banking Council

The SACP has also engaged the Banking Council of South Africa where it received a fairly substantial response - a testament to the levels of popular mobilisation, interest, media attention and therefore pressure on the banks that the Campaign has generated. Essentially, the Council formally agreed with many of our concerns, that:


However, in each case, the Council sought to deflect concern away from considering substantial transformation of the banks themselves. The Council is clearly not enthusiastic about a summit, though it does not wish to appear to be opposed. In response, the SACP emphasised the following:

The financial sanctions against SA in the 1980s successfully mobilised large US-based church and other funds to disinvest from SA on moral, not profit grounds. By the same token, positive, developmental investment might be encouraged. Government
departments, trade unions, religious formations, etc., are major depositors in banks.

If the different banks' reinvestment practices were out in the open, they could make strategic banking decisions, not just driven by habit or short-term considerations.

The concessions by the Banking Council are an important victory. The banks concede that the issues raised in the Campaign are indeed valid. But we know that although the bosses can concede such things, they are not going to change without continued organised pressure.

The Banking Council and the banks themselves are not one and the same thing. There is often a gulf between the relatively enlightened positions of the Council, and the actual banks. Is the Council effectively mandated? Is it sufficiently alert to the actual problems occurring?

Previously the Banking Council had set up a Bank Ombud. Some of our comrades in Parliament considered that it was reasonably helpful, and that complaints and queries could be referred to the Ombud with relative success.

An Independent Banking Adjudicator has now replaced it. In theory, this should be an improvement; in practice it is not functioning effectively. There are long delays and failures to respond.

The Banking Council and we have a shared interest in seeing that this institution works effectively. We need to compare information and seek ways to ensure there is a drastic improvement in performance.

Banks and economic development

We need also broaden the question of transforming and diversifying the financial sector to include its role in economic growth and development.
A debate has begun in, for example, the ANC's Umrabulo, around a debate on 'allocative capital'. How, structurally, institutionally and strategically, do we ensure that financial institutions - the Treasury, public banks (like DBSA and the Land Bank), pension and provident funds, small savings associations and the main commercial banks - all increasingly contribute to sustainable investment and development?

We urgently need a comprehensive review of the entire financial sector and urgent including from government to put in place a comprehensive legislative framework, including:]

Programme of action

The Campaign for the Transformation and Diversification of the Financial Sector must:


In the short-term the Campaign should:


This is a popular campaign which speaks to all sections of South African society. With this in mind and given that preparations for the NEDLAC Summit on the Financial Sector are at an advanced stage, the SACP now seeks to escalate and broaden the campaign through a Broad Popular Campaign Front and an ongoing programme of action (see box).

"All these developments," Blade Nzimande told the consultative meeting to launch the campaign confirm that the banks now have nowhere to hide. They have to respond to these growing calls and pressure from the mass of our people". He saluted all those who have been involved in attempts to build alternative forms of collective ownership of our economy. "Let us co-operatively and strongly move forward to a transformed and diversified financial sector!"

Build the Broad Popular Campaign Front!

The success of the Campaign for the Transformation and Diversification of the Financial Sector so far has rested on our ability to tap into the anger and frustration felt by many South Africans as consumers (or failed consumers) of banking services. We must sustain this as a central thrust of the campaign.

Since the launch, wider sections of South African society have been calling on the banks to transform their practices and policies in favour of poor and working people.
The Black Economic Empowerment Commission's Report on Black Economic Empowerment specifically calls for a fundamental change in the financial sector's ownership, policies and practices.

Some of the organisations that have endorsed the campaign are leading important initiatives on co-operatives, savings clubs and alternative financial institutions. They include the National Co-operative Association of South Africa, the National Stokvels Association of South Africa, NAFCOC, the Million Women's Savings Movement, ANC, COSATU, COSATU affiliates, ANC WL, ANC YL, YABCCO Co-operative, SASCO, Black Economic Empowerment Commission, NAFCOC, SANCO, SA Homeless People's Federation, SACCOL, Diakonia Council of Churches, SANGOCO, Self-Employed Women's Union, StreetNet, and many more.

SACP branches and districts have also convened hundreds of public meetings throughout the country.
These groups have popularised the campaign and collected demands and problems from the public, which have been consolidated into demands and proposals on the way forward.

The SACP also notes and applauds the work and campaigns of the Diakonia Council of Churches, the SA Municipal Workers Union, and rural women in the North West and Eastern Cape Provinces in mobilising communities around the lack of access to credit and building co-operative banks.

Building on all this support, the SACP proposes to launch a Broad Popular Campaign Front, whose principles and approach would be building a common, united and collective front to engage the financial sector and government with one voice.

No organisation will be precluded from pursuing its own independent programme. It will not be an organisation, but a broad-based front, led by a representative committee, co-ordinating our efforts to ensure maximum impact.

 

As reported in Shopsteward No 10.3, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has launched a worldwide campaign to end child labour, which COSATU fully supports.

In case any South Africans thought that this was only a problem in other parts of the world, Sizwe samaYende, of African Eye News Service, has produced this damning proof that it is a huge problem here too.

Children as young as six are being forced to work on farms in Mpumalanga as part of a deliberate strategy by farmers to use the cheapest and most docile workers available. A police raid on 15 farms uncovered the widespread use of illegal Mozambican child labour.

The children, employed on sprawling citrus and sugar farms in the Onderberg region, are paid as little as R2,08 per day in return for 12-hours hard physical labour, from sunrise to sunset.

Most of the children and up to 80 percent of the women working on the farms are illegal Mozambicans who can't complain about their working conditions without being deported to impoverished villages in Mozambique.

Labour Department inspectors who raided the 15 farms were visibly shocked by the children's fatalistic acceptance that they were doomed to a life of literal slavery. "I am revolted. I've been doing this job for years but have never seen children working this young or abuse on this scale," said labour inspector Boikie Mampuru, who co-ordinated the raids.

Serious labour abuses were discovered on all 15 farms but Piet Maritz's estate near Marloth Park was cited as the worst example of child labour the inspectors had yet seen. Maritz admits that he uses child labour and prefers illegal Mozambican to South African workers.

"We don't employ anyone unless they ask us for work, and these children do," he said, boasting that: "This is any case a good way for them to learn how to work while they are still young. South Africans are also very [lazy] and only want to work in offices these days, so we use these illegal Mozambicans who are very eager to do real work".

The youngest workers on Maritz's farm are girls between six and nine, used as babysitters for even younger children and responsible for herding the toddlers around after their teenaged mothers as they pick and package oranges.

They start work at dawn and work the same hours as the adults, knocking off just before sunset, six-days a week. None go to school or receive any kind of formal education.

Jeanette Mbiza, 22, is mother to one of the babies and openly told inspectors that she was expected to pay her child's minder R50 per month, or just over R2 per day, from her own meagre salary. "I don't have a choice. There is no time during the day for me to look after my baby or even take her to doctors.

The farmer deducts R20 [almost two-days labour] if I take a morning off," said Mbiza. "I only earn R275 per month and breastfeed the baby during my breaks. I know it's not good but it is the best I can do."

Julio Mphisa, 15, said workers knew they were being ill-treated and underpaid, but were too scared to complain for fear of deportation or beatings. "Life is very bad here. The white [farmers] beat us for even small mistakes and the money is not good. I earn only R100 per month, but there is no other work so we have no choice," said Mphisa.

Saresh Milane is only 10-years old but already a veteran worker on Maritz's citrus farm. As an illegal Mozambican, Milane says she is afraid to complain about work conditions but feels workers should be paid more for working 12-hours per day, six days per week.
Nearby, a 10-year old boy picked oranges but was too scared to speak for fear of reprisals by farm supervisors.

Selina Moyana, 17, has life slightly easier but still works from dawn to sunset six days per week in Maritz's citrus warehouse. "We only rest on Sundays, when we pray for a better life. I earn R276 per month but also get one kilogram of maize meal and some salt," she said.

Maritz insisted his farm paid the highest wages and offered some of the best working conditions in the region. He said that all workers received free accommodation, maize meal, and occasional rice and soya mince packages.

Mampuru and his team were distinctly unimpressed and formally charged Maritz with employing under aged workers and illegal immigrants. Maritz and 14 other farmers were also issued with notices warning them to comply with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act or they would face additional criminal charges.

"It's sad that this raid was so successful," said Mampuru. "The best result would have been if we found no violations and everyone was happy, but we have instead found serious abuses on all 15 farms we visited."

Agri-Mpumalanga Union president Lourie Bosman stressed on Friday that all 'decent' farmers disapproved of child labour and the use illegal immigrants. "They will get no support or protection from us. The government must implement the full force of the law".

South African Human Rights commissioner Charlotte McClain expressed shock at the 'feudal' conditions on the farms. "This is completely unconstitutional and illegal. We're glad the agricultural union has reacted so responsibly and is condemning the reported abuses".

"But more need to be done," she says. "The Human Rights Commission is launching an 18-month probe into violations against farmers and farm labourers and will be investigating this case as well." She expressed concern, however, that economic refugees from Mozambique were being targeted for exploitation and called for more vigilance.