CAPE TOWN, May 1 (Xinhua) -- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday marked the May Day with a promise to put the workers' interests first.
The South African government never surrenders the workers' interests, Ramaphosa told a May Day rally in Durban, a coastal city in eastern South Africa.
Originally born from the protracted struggle for workers' rights and social justice of the late 1800s, the May Day has been an international holiday in many countries since 1891. In South Africa, it has been officially recognized and observed since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Ramaphosa said workers have worked hard for the country but have been excluded from the country's riches up until now.
The president also urged workers not to subject their interests to greed and corruption.
Ramaphosa took the opportunity to urge the enforcement of the newly introduced national minimum wage (NMW).
The government will not hesitate to enforce compliance of the NMW, he said.
All employers must stop violating the rights of the workers and implement the NMW so that workers in the country should start moving away from poverty wages, he said.
"We will also advance and continue to advance the struggle to reduce wage inequality and ensure that every workers enjoys a decent standard of living," Ramaphosa said.
As the country's first ever minimum wage, the NMW, which took effect on Jan. 1 this year, sets a floor of 20 rand (about 1.4 U.S. dollars) per hour, or 3,500 rand (about 244 dollars) a month for the majority of the country's six million workers, more than half of the labor force.
On Monday, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the largest union federation in the country, complained that a number of errant companies and organizations fail to implement the NMW.
The federation urged the government to enforce the NMW compliance in companies which get away with gross violations.
