The government has finally come up with the money to pay prosecutors and state legal officials their long-awaited pay increases.
Justice Department spokesperson Zolile Nqayi on Wednesday admitted that budget problems had hampered the implementation of the Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD) under which state-employed legal professionals will now receive pay increases promised to them in July last year.
Nqayi said the Justice Department had amassed the R306-million it needed to pay the OSD increases for National Prosecuting Authority, Legal Aid Board and Department of Justice staff after receiving R117-million from the National Treasury "for the annual inflation adjustment" and "reprioritising" its spending.
He stated that the government legal employees would receive their OSD-level salaries - plus arrears payments from April this year - from October 15.
"The department is working intensely to ensure that arrear payments from July 1 2007 are made by December 13 2008."
Nqayi revealed that the Justice Department was engaged in "high-level discussions" with the Treasury over the budget it needed to pay experienced legal staff further wage increases.
The promised payout comes after hundreds of prosecutors held nationwide demonstrations outside courts last month after a confidential June 20 memo, leaked to NPA staff members, revealed that Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla had agreed to the dispensation increases but had yet to obtain the budget from the Treasury.
Only two weeks before the release of this memo, NPA boss Mokotedi Mpshe promised staff that "funding issues will not delay the implementation of the (dispensation)".
Speaking to The Star on Wednesday, prosecutors said they were heartened by the news of their pending increases.
"But I will only start celebrating when I see the money in my account. There have been many promises made and broken already," one said.