Pretoria - The City of Tshwane has instituted a probe into a staggering R80 million paid as monthly salaries to more than 500 general workers hired by the municipality in 2019 for doing nothing.
The workers’ contracts were terminated in October last year after it was concluded that the posts were redundant.
On May 26 they marched to Tshwane House demanding to be reinstated into their positions, urging the City to figure out where they could be suitably placed for work.
During the march, workers confessed to the Pretoria News that they had not performed any work for the municipality since their appointments in November 2019.
“They were supposed to work in the waste department as general workers, but what happened is that they never got to work because there was no one willing to communicate with them. For 12 months taxpayers’ money was used to pay them while they were not performing any duties,” their leader, Cedric Cele, said.
Tshwane chief of staff Jordan Griffiths said yesterday the municipality had instituted an investigation into the dubious hiring process for workers, who were taken on board without specific job descriptions.
He said the workers’ contracts were terminated in October last year after the then administrators appointed by the ANC-Gauteng provincial government to run the municipality were booted out by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
Griffiths was reacting to the public comment by ActionSA provincial campaigns manager Abel Tau, who demanded that the City open “an investigation into the R80m salaries bungle engineered by the DA”.
Tau, a former Tshwane MMC and acting mayor, said general workers reported to the City for work for a year, “but were forced to stand idle as there was no work for them. This was while salaries continued to be paid.
“Even more concerning, the City has launched no investigation even after allegations of fraud and corruption. It is alleged that under the contract payments were also made to ghost employees,” he said.
Griffiths said it was untrue that no investigation was launched into the matter. “We have already requested an investigation into this matter weeks back to understand what actually took place in this hiring process.”
Pretoria News