Maroela Media reports that two months before the contracts of 25 Cuban engineers expire, their appointments in SA were declared unlawful by the High Court in Pretoria on Friday.
Judge Jan Swanepoel found the manner in which they were appointed to be unlawful and held that the saying “charity begins at home” was applicable in this case. However, he did not issue an interdict declaring the current contracts of the engineers invalid because they were a done deed. In 2020, the then Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu made the appointments. Trade union Solidarity condemned the decision to bring foreign engineers to SA at great cost to work on water infrastructure and took Sisulu and her department to court. This was on the basis that the appointments were contrary to the required procedures the government had to follow in order to obtain the services of such skilled employees. The trade union further described them unnecessary and unethical because South Africans who were suffering due to unemployment were simply overlooked for the sake of more expensive foreign workers. According to calculations made at the time, the 25 engineers cost SA approximately R75 million. Solidarity Deputy Chief Executive Anton van der Bijl commented: “Thanks to Solidarity’s involvement, further large-scale and blatantly unnecessary wastefulness has been uncovered. Nonetheless, it is a disgrace that once more it was necessary to intervene at great expense through the courts. It once again shows how the government’s own interests far outweigh the interests of ordinary South Africans.”
- Read the full original of the above report in Afrikaans by Isabel Venter at Maroela Media
- Read Solidarity’s press release on the judgment at Politicsweb
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page