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Sunday Times reports that senior officials of the Department of Employment and Labour (DEL) and its Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) scrambled on a Sunday night and into the early hours of Monday morning last December to nail down an “irregular” deal that would have seen R5bn in UIF funds being channelled towards an untested job-creation initiative.
The department has since pulled the plug on the deal and axed the chair of Productivity SA, Mthunzi Mdwaba, whose hastily established company, Thuja Holdings, was registered just 10 days before the deal with it was signed. News of the scandal broke in a report last December which revealed that senior officials who devised the scheme admitted it was an “untested thing” designed to create jobs. The outcome of a forensic investigation into the matter now shows how the scheme went from rejected to signed in just a few days. It has also emerged that, were it not for three officials at the UIF and the DEL who pushed back against the scheme, it may well have gone ahead. E-mails submitted to investigators by officials reveal how DEL director-general Thobile Lamati and UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping were determined to push the deal through by year-end, though it is unclear what the rush was for. These revelations have come as DEL Minister Thulas Nxesi and the UIF are under pressure from business and labour for the UIF to be placed under administration. Last week, Business Unity SA said: “Systemic issues at the UIF have been publicly revealed recently by news [which indicate] that questionable investments have put at risk billions of rand that should be allocated to workers in distress.” Mentime, Lamati’s fate lies in the hands of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who hires and fires directors-general. It is unclear what action, if any, Lamati has taken against Maruping, who reports to him.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Sabelo Skiti at Sunday Times (subscriber access only)
- Read too, Public Interest SA calls for full probe into ‘irregular’ R5bn UIF deal, at BusinessLive
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page