By Michael Bagraim
A story in Thursday’s Cape Times, “Employers blamed for seven billion rand in unpaid pension contributions”, refers.
Hopefully we will see numerous prosecutions of those employers who did not pay over the contributions to the pension funds. It’s not enough just to report the matter to the Pension Funds Adjudicator.
The monies were deducted from staff members and used for other purposes than paying it over to the pension fund. This, by all definitions, is “theft”. The reality is that many employers across the board deduct pension money, UIF, workmen’s compensation, PAYE and other such deductions and then don’t pay the relevant authorities.
We’ve seen this behaviour by the ANC and by large parastatals. It is alleged that even the SA Post Office didn’t pay over monies to medical aids. If true, this is criminal and must be punished.
If the governing party, the ANC, can get away with it like they have done, it sends a very wrong message out to the rest of the business community. It can’t be tolerated by any stretch of the imagination.
When employees lose their jobs, they struggle when their UIF money is withheld. Not only is this disappointing, but it is downright disgusting. I’m hoping that the trade unions step forward and lodge criminal complaints, and I’m also hoping that employees who aren’t unionised get themselves together in groups and report to their nearest police station.
It is said that the fish rots from the head. Well, here in South Africa, we see the governing party rotting and sending this message down the line to the smallest of businesses.
It is about time that the workers speak up and together send a message that they won’t tolerate the abuse of their funds. Even now, the Minister of Employment and Labour is going to use UIF funding for some madcap schemes to create job opportunities. This is not the government’s money ‒ it belongs to the employees.
We must speak up.
Cape Times