TimesLive reports that the board of the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) has decided against reinstating its erstwhile CEO Zolani Matthews despite an arbitration ruling ordering that he should get his job back.

The board, led by Leonard Ramatlakane, met on Tuesday and decided to take the arbitrator’s ruling to the Labour Court on review. The arbitrator, retired judge Robert Nugent, ruled recently that the agency should reinstate Matthews with back pay. This was after the agency dismissed him in December, ostensibly for not having declared that he held dual citizenship. Prasa has apparently also applied for a stay of the arbitration award. Matthews is the son of late struggle stalwart Joe Matthews, who lived in exile in England, which is when the dual citizenship was obtained. Transport minister Fikile Mbalula reportedly warned Matthews months before he was fired that the Prasa board planned to remove him. In a series of text messages, Mbalula told Matthews that Ramatlakane saw him as a threat to his “self-enrichment” scheme and was leading the charge to have him ousted. Matthews included copies of the text messages in his submissions before the arbitration heard by Nugent.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thanduxolo Jika at BusinessLive

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