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SowetanLive reports that for 18 years government employees in the North West, some as senior as provincial heads of departments (HODs) and directors earning salaries of up to R1m a year, have been staying in state properties for free.
Some of these senior civil servants have handed the state properties to their relatives and other tenants who are not working for the state. The properties include residential houses and flats, with rental fees ranging from R900 to R4,576 a month. Now the Department of Public Works (DPW) in North West is starting a process of vetting occupants at more than 2,000 properties it owns in the province in order to recoup about R71m owed to it in unpaid rentals by defaulting government employees. “The process will mean going into each and every property we own to verify who lives there because there have been cases of civil servants who gave away these properties to their relatives and some are renting them out to foreigners. Despite being owed more than R70m, we also pay a lot of money for rates and taxes to municipalities because these tenants don’t even bother to pay for those,” public works MEC Gaoage Oageng Molapisi indicated. He said civil servants in the province were simply refusing to pay rent without giving meaningful reasons and were “ripping off the government”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mpho Koka at SowetanLive
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page