THE Msunduzi Municipality is clamping down on “out of control” sick leave taken by employees.
Those returning from extended sick leave would be subjected to assessments and monitoring to determine their fitness for duty. This is for individuals who have been away from work for two weeks or more.
A report tabled before Exco Members stated that sick leave in Msunduzi Municipality was out of control and in most instances there are no follow ups done by management.
The move has been welcomed by opposition parties who said the municipality needed instruments to clamp down on the “potential” abuse of sick leave.
Acting Msunduzi Municipal Manager Sizwe Hadebe said it was concerning that people who had been on long leave would come back and just resume their duties without any form of assessment being done on their fitness for duty.
The report stated that the city’s ageing workforce was a contributory factor to high absenteeism.
Because of the lack of sustained observation and treatment, the report said, supervisors and management tend to place employees on light duties and this resulted in the pool of employees on light duty increasing uncontrollably.
“Some employees whose sick leave has been exhausted are allowed to utilise their vacation leave and once the vacation leave is exhausted are allowed to report for duty with ill health condition, because they cannot perform any work, they sit there until it’s time to knocking off,” it said.
DA leader in the Council Jerome Majola said the issue needed to be closely monitored.
“We are on the right path with this (proposal). We need an instrument to monitor the issue of absenteeism.”
“We expect that a report should be given to us where we will want to know all the departments that are affected and all the sick leaves that is suspicious.”