Moneyweb reports that the Labour Court in Johannesburg will on Thursday hear an urgent application to review and set aside a decision by Higher Education, Science and Technology Minister Blade Nzimande to place the Construction Education and Training Authority (Ceta) under administration.
The court application follows Nzimande stating at the weekend that he had taken the decision after receiving serious allegations of governance failure and gross financial mismanagement at Ceta, including but not limited to irregular payments of employees’ pension funds and salary increases. Nzimande said in a statement that some of these alleged misdemeanours were aired in a hearing in parliament. The portfolio committee on higher education, science and technology had expressed its serious concerns about the state of affairs of the Ceta and its lack of confidence in the Ceta board, and had urged the minister to take action as a matter of urgency. But Nzimande’s move led to Webster Mfebe, CEO of the SA Forum of Civil Engineering Contractors (Safcec), who is also a member of the Ceta board, escalating the matter to Deputy President David Mabuza, the leader of government business in parliament. Mfebe wrote in a letter to Mabuza that “baseless and malicious allegations” were levelled against him and Safcec by former Ceta CEO Sonja Pilusa and that Nzimande was embarking on an irregular process to place Ceta under administration when the relevant portfolio committee’s processes and recommendations were still not complete because parliament was in recess. He added that Ceta had a consistently high performing board, whose performance was validated by four consecutive clean audit outcomes, including in its 2018/2019 financial year.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Roy Cokayne at Moneyweb
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