Lynda Silk, Cape Peninsula Civil Conservation chair
In response to “City advertises for festive season baboon rangers,” Bulletin, October 17), the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team released a statement on Monday October 14 that “processes are under way to secure the services of baboon rangers for December 2024, including the upcoming transition period starting on 1 January 2025”.
For 28 months the public has been told of a transition in baboon management, yet we still have no idea what baboon management is transitioning “to”.
Cape Peninsula Civil Conservation attended the non-compulsory “request for quotation“ meeting with the City on October 15 and found that the processes in place are not reassuring, leaving still serious questions as to whether there will be viable teams of working, skilled rangers on the ground in December. Further, there is at this time still no advertised process in place to employ baboon rangers for January.
It is a fact that 76 baboon rangers have been given retrenchment notice with effect from November 30. We don’t know what will happen after then because although the task team has stated processes are under way to “secure” baboon rangers, common sense shows these processes to be extremely problematic in actual implementation, and that there is no actual security in this tenure.
Whilst a request for quotation has been advertised by the City for baboon rangers for the month of December only, the specifications of this request are, at this time, not available to view in the City’s procurement portal.
Nobody attending the meeting on October 15 had received the request’s specification, which made it impossible to ask appropriate questions at the time.
The City said that they would announce in the third week of November who had been awarded the bid to provide baboon rangers for December, which would leave only a week for the selected service provider to secure staff and prepare practically including ordering necessary vehicles, equipment, stock and uniforms.
As things stand, the last day of employment for all the baboon rangers is November 30. If the current baboon ranger contractor, NCC, were sure at this time that they would be awarded the bid, they might be able to hold onto their staff for another month’s work.
One cannot reasonably expect staff to wait until just days before they are unemployed to start looking for income for their families, especially as we head into holiday season and most major businesses close down for a month and many are supporting seven or eight people on one salary.
Further undermining job security and motivation for baboon rangers is that the task has yet to advertise or announce any processes in place from January 1.
This again will be extremely short notice for a contractor, staff and suppliers and offers no job security to trained and experienced workers as the tender from January is on a month-to-month basis.
Whilst CPCC welcomes the continuation of the ranger programme and steps to secure it, it seems unlikely we could have consistent, competent baboon ranger services from January 1.
We are now years into a process that has given no answers.
Just because a plan is in place, does not mean the plan is practically workable.
