Pretoria - The City of Tshwane has been found wanting for paying salaries of R88.4 million to employees between November 2019 and October 2020 for doing nothing.
The 627 workers were hired by the City to assist at waste management on a 12-month contract but were never allocated work.
The millions spent on workers who were idle were flagged by Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke in the latest Municipal Finance Management Act report for 2020/21, which characterised the payments as material irregularities.
The report said: “The City of Tshwane (Gauteng) paid salaries of R88.4m to employees between November 2019 and October 2020 without any work being allocated to these employees.”
The workers in question have been embroiled in a legal fight with the municipality upon the termination of their contract.
At least 88 of them took the metro to the South African Local Government Bargaining Council on the grounds that they were unfairly dismissed and demanded to be employed permanently.
The bargaining council ruled in their favour on February 28.
In addition, bargaining council commissioner Joseph Mphaphuli ordered the municipality to pay each of them an arrears salary of R115 000 “they would have earned for the duration of employment had it not been for unfair dismissal”.
He found that the applicants were employed as general workers and that there was “no end to cleaning the city”.
“The job will always be there and for that reason there will be no justification for employing cleaners on contract for a limited duration,” Mphaphuli said in his ruling.
The City approached the Labour Court in a bid to overrule a verdict.
The Pretoria News contacted the City to enquire about steps taken to recover the money paid to workers for doing nothing and action taken against those responsible for the payments.
City spokesperson Selby Bokaba said: “The City has taken the matter on review at the Labour Court in Johannesburg and we are still awaiting the outcome.
“As things stand, the matter in question is sub judice.”
Bokaba said the City believed that a different court would most likely arrive at a different outcome.
Workers’ representative Mzuvele Cele said the hearing of the matter at the Labour Court was delayed because the initial application by aggrieved workers was riddled with mistakes.
“We are in the process of correcting that and in a few days all things will be in order.”
Pretoria News