Seven Nehawu leaders at Cogta face suspension
THE leadership of the National Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) in the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) face suspension for holding a staff meeting, allegedly without authorisation.
They said the meeting was held in their lunch hour earlier this month.
All seven union leaders were last Wednesday served with letters of intent to suspend them after they allegedly organised a staff meeting on June 7, while no authority was given to them to do so by their bosses.
The Daily Dispatch has seen letters served to labour representatives who were given until next week to “provide reasons” why they should avoid a precautionary suspension.
The letters state that the department planned to officially charge them “for intentionally violating” the department’s labour relations policy which reads: “any lunch time meeting requires approval for as long as it is held within the employer’s scope of operations”.
The letter further states: “Absence of approval or authorisation for the meeting you attended justifies a disciplinary enquiry, hence you are invited to give reasons why you should not be subjected to a disciplinary enquiry as your conduct is viewed as a form of serious misconduct”.
The letters, dated June 14, bear the name of acting head of department Monwabisi Baza, while they are signed by newly appointed deputy director-general Vuyo Mlokoti, according to the union members.
This comes as branch chairman Lennox Maho also faces extra charges for allegedly “insulting the dignity of the MEC [Fikile Xasa] and those of members of the senior management services, accusing them of being corrupt”.
Maho is also accused of allegedly accusing the department’s newly appointed senior administrators, Basil Mase and Malibongwe Ngcai, of being “rapists from the legislature”.
Mase and Ngcai are former senior managers at the provincial legislature who were implicated in the Neela Hoosain Commission’s probe on the sex-for-jobs and jobs-for-pals scandal that rocked the legislature in 2015.
They both resigned from the legislature last month, while their disciplinary hearing for distributing the confidential Hoosain Commission report and taking the institution to court was still ongoing.
They were yet to face the internal disciplinary processes for their alleged involvement in the scandals, as recommended by the Hoosain commission.
Mase and Ngcai both took up their new posts at Cogta on June 1, a day after they served their resignation letters to the legislature.
Ngcai was appointed general manager of corporate services, with Mase appointed as general manager of strategic information management.
Maho yesterday confirmed that each of the union leaders had received such letters but denied “insu Xasa or referring to Ngcai and Mase as “rapists”.
“Those allegations are baseless,” said Maho, who refused to comment further and then referred questions to Nehawu’s provincial office. Nehawu provincial secretary Miki Jaceni could not be reached by the time of writing yesterday.
Cogta spokesman Mamnkeli Ngam yesterday confirmed that all Nehawu shop stewards were served with such letters after “they have been consistently warned not to convene meetings without official authorisation”.
He said their failure to solicit approval for their June 7 meeting, “was in breach of the department’s human resources policy”.
“In the said meeting they even insulted the dignity of the (MEC) and his entire management team,” said Ngam.
He defended the fact that their letters were signed by Mlokoti, while they bore Baza’s name, saying Mlokoti was the acting HOD on the day the letters were signed. —