VEHICLE MANUFACTURER DaimlerChrysler South Africa will be the first South African firm to provide anti-retroviral treatment (ART) to its workers post-employment. Following redundancy, all employees on its Aids programme will have their treatment extended until such time that government makes the treatment available, confirmed chairperson Christoph Köpke at the company’s annual business results media conference. Some 180 people of the 450 employees who have been confirmed to have HIV/Aids have registered their condition with their medical aids. However, only 85 people are receiving ART treatment through the company. Until the board decision to treat employees post-employment, these would have had their treatment discontinued when they left the firm’s employ. This was the equivalent of signing their death warrants, said Köpke. However, the new Aids assistance plan, involving treatment that totals R10 500 an employee a year, will change this. The manufacturer had already received praise in June last year for its HIV/Aids programme, when United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan and former US president Bill Clinton gave the company the Global Business Excellence Award for its comprehensive prevention and care programme. At the time, Annan noted that the company’s South African programme exemplified the best kind of public-private partnership approach in the fight against HIV/Aids. “You have shown what can be achieved by facing this insidious enemy head-on and working together to defeat it,” he said.