Sunday Tribune reports that a senior director at Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) has taken the institution to the Durban Labour Court over his precautionary suspension.
Lwazi Mthimkhulu, an acting senior director in the human resource and development department, was placed on precautionary suspension recently by the university’s vice-chancellor and principal, Enoch Malaza, on allegations of payroll irregularities. Mthimkhulu, who has been in an acting position since January, challenged his suspension at the court. In his court papers, he claimed that he was being targeted because he questioned some “dubious” payments in the university’s payroll. He claimed that within two months of acting in the position he discovered “horrifying acts of corruption and fraud in the procurement of security services”. In Mthimkhulu’s view, it was his protected disclosure to a line manager about a demand for a R700,000 kickback from a service provider in exchange for the R99m security contract that resulted in the “vindictive conduct of the institution.” But according to Malaza, Mthimkhulu was put on precautionary suspension pending a full investigation based on an audit trail revealing that he benefited financially from irregular transactions on the university’s payroll system in the period January to March 2020.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Siboniso Mngadi at Sunday Tribune
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