The Mercury reports that the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) is expected to meet this week with the KwaZulu-Natal provincial management of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development over unpaid salaries of contracted workers at the Durban Magistrate’s Court.

The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) is responsible for the payments, which have not been made to a subcontractor, resulting in 56 employees of a cleaning company not being paid. According to Nehawu’s Ntokozo Nxumalo, the department contracted a construction company for the renovation of the court. The construction company then subcontracted to another company for the cleaning services. The owner of the subcontracted company said they had received various assurances from DPWI that they would be paid. “We were first promised payment on May 7 then another letter said it would be on May 14. I spoke to my workers, I told them that we have not received payments and I asked them to bear with me until we get our payment, and if they cannot, they are welcome to quit. None of them left,” said the owner of the cleaning company. She said they had now been promised that they would be paid on Monday. DPWI spokesperson Lennox Mabaso said the department had fallen prey to a cyberattack and explained: “We are victims of a cyberattack and we were then forced to shut down our systems. This affected our payments. We were notified by our banks about this attack and we had to protect the state. We did, however, notify and apologise to our creditors as soon as we were made aware of the issue.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Siphesihle Buthelezi at The Mercury

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