Durban - The National Tertiary Education Union has filed court papers in which its members voiced concerns at the way the Durban University of Technology (DUT) had distributed funds from a staff assistance account, that the union said were owed to its members.
The union on Friday was seeking an interdict in the Durban High Court to prevent the DUT from disbursing the funds until the matter has been dealt with.
Judge Graham Lopes granted an order by consent to this effect.
In its founding affidavit, the union’s facilities co-ordinator and legal adviser, Sanjith Dhanny, said the funds referred to came from a surplus fund that emerged from two schemes, to which employees had been contributing, when ML Sultan Technikon merged with Natal Technikon to form DUT, and the schemes were rearranged.
The funds were at the time retained in a “staff assistance scheme” to grow interest, but the scheme subsequently ended.
At a 2014 meeting, DUT’s finance department said the fund had R520 155 in it, but the union in court papers has disputed that this was the true amount.
It said it would be requesting a detailed account of how this figure was arrived at.
The union also said the DUT had shown undue favouritism towards “more powerful unions” – the Tertiary Education National Union of South Africa (Tenusa) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) – by not properly consulting the smaller union, when deciding how to distribute the funds in the staff account.
At a meeting this year, Tenusa tabled a proposal that the funds be used, in part, for legal expenses in a post retirement medical aid matter involving DUT, Tenusa and Nehawu.
The National Tertiary Education Union had objected to this and no agreement was reached, but the union was subsequently copied in on an e-mail between DUT, Tenusa and Nehawu which said an agreement had been reached and that R260 000 from the staff assistance account would be transferred to the post retirement medical aid litigation account.
The union was again copied in on another e-mail, saying DUT’s vice-chancellor had agreed to this proposal.
The National Tertiary Education Union claimed that because its members had contributed to the schemes, the funds in the staff assistance account were due to them, and said it would ask that the courts set aside the agreement reached between DUT, Tenusa and Nehawu.
In an opposing affidavit, DUT chief financial officer Dheopersadh Aswanth said the union was making an “unjustified attack on (the institution’s) integrity,” and that while decision making at the meeting’s the National Tertiary Education Union referred to was based on consensus, if consensus could not be reached, it was based on agreement between DUT and the major union.
Daily News
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