Let’s keep going

It feels like we have been in lockdown for months and many people are getting extremely frustrated, worried, frightened and confused by all the mixed messages we are being given. From Donald Trump to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and so many in between.

EOHCB is the industry’s main point of contact with the government at this time with a collective effort from the Bargaining Council, UASA, SAAHSP and many others, including ourselves, helping where we can. For the latest updates, click here

We at Professional Beauty and Salon International feel your pain and frustration. We are being constantly told about people who are breaking the law by doing treatments at home. Suppliers are upset that some companies are breaking the law by supplying professional products to anyone that asks for them. We will continue to convey the message that it is illegal to undertake any treatments.

There is an old saying, “Walk for a mile in my shoes” meaning that you should think about their motivation before criticising them. They could be desperate to put food on the table for instance. We are all suffering and some more than others. If you know of someone who is undertaking treatments, what can you do? Are you going to report them to the police, have them arrested, fined and place further financial hardship on them?

It would be far better to talk to them, make sure that they know the consequences and tell them that they are possibly putting our whole industry at risk of a delay in reopening.

Sadly, we, along with EOHCB, SAAHSP and others have no powers to police these people and we also have very limited resources as well. The only thing we can do is make people aware that they are breaking the law, that they risk heavy fines, imprisonment and that their insurance will not be valid if they have an issue with a client.

Then what have we been doing you may ask?

We have been trying our hardest to bring people together in order to either give a louder voice to our industry, we have been providing educational opportunities through our webinars and we are a platform for people to vent their frustrations. We have also promoted many other webinars and provided as much helpful information as we can that will help the industry in some way or other.

There have been many petitions that have been organised in the past few weeks asking the government to lift the ban on treatments or to move the industry up a level or two from Level 1.

The message has maybe not got through as to how this effects the clients, the consumers, particularly as they now start returning to work.

Therefore, we urge you to keep supporting the EOHCB petition, pass it on to your clients ask your friends to pass it on to their clients too!

We ask you to spread the word amongst your clients, to pass it on to their friends, to post it on social media and to do this regularly for the next few weeks. The target is 75,000, however we should aim for 200,000 signatures for this petition to have an even greater effect. A real and significant number so that this time, maybe government may sit up and take notice.

There is a growing wave of support for lifting the lockdown, here is just one well -reasoned argument, there are many more. Let’s take advantage of this and put in some effort to give the industry a real voice so that we can be heard by government. Let’s get together and do something.

Click here for the link, spread the word send it to everyone you know.

(Report by Phil Woods)