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Saturday Citizen reports that at least 163 ghost workers at the Free State’s Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality will continue to get paid while sitting at home, after they allegedly held the acting city manager hostage and forced him to sign off on the illegal payments.
Sources at the beleaguered council, now under the control of the national Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta), said acting city manager Tebogo Motlashuping was held hostage by some of the ghost employees, who threatened to throw him out of the 12th floor window at the municipal Bram Fischer building if he refused to sign for payments. Motlashuping, who was appointed to the municipality by the government, seemingly had no choice but to oblige and sign off three-month payments for each of the alleged kidnappers, also promising them that he would formally advertise their posts. A source indicated: “These ghost workers were paid R8.9 million net income previously. For three months, this is going to come to almost R27 million and over R30 million gross.” Following an expose of Mangaung’s ghost political appointees, mainly from the ANC regional membership, a scramble apparently ensued to get them to sign falsified attendance registers. The ghost workers allegedly included Transport Minister Fikile Mbalulu’s brother Jabu, who was appointed after the 2021 local elections, but never reported for work.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Getrude Makhafola at The Citizen (subscriber access only)
- Read too, ‘We’ll burn down this place’ – Mangaung workers storm councillors’ meeting, at The Citizen
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page