Solution ‘nearer for Transnet pensioners’
A 90-year-old former Transnet employee might be closer to forcing the parastatal and the Treasury to help pensioners, AfriForum said yesterday. Legal representative Willie Spies said the civil rights group launched a court application in October 2012 on behalf of Gordon Thomson, one of many pensioners who had received a 2 percent a year pension increase for the past 11 years. He had applied to the court to force Transnet and the Treasury to find an interim solution mediated by Parliament. He was a member of Transnet’s Second Defined Pension Fund. In its reply, Transnet argued that another fund, the Transport Pension Fund, should be added as a party before the case resumed. Both funds opposed the application, heard by the North Gauteng High Court last week. Spies said Judge Selby Baqwa ruled in favour of Thomson and ordered that the Transport Pension Fund be joined as a party. Spies said the “table has now been set” for the conclusion of the application before year end. – Sapa