Suspended Nehawu leaders block hearing

SEVEN unionists at the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs’ (Cogta) Bhisho headquarters, who were suspended last month for hosting a workers’ meeting during lunch hour without authorisation, have interdicted their disciplinary hearing. The hearing was meant to start yesterday.

The Nehawu leaders obtained the court interdict last week, saying the legality of their suspension should first be tested in a court of law on October 13 before they could be subjected to any internal disciplinary hearing.

Their departmental hearing has now been postponed to October 20.

The unionists, who include Nehawu Cogta branch chairman Lennox Maho and secretary Phelisa Sidondi, said they were suspended as they were against “employment irregularities” at the department.

Maho yesterday said their suspension was a plan by management to divert attention from “the critical irregular issues we have raised against them”.

In the intention to suspend letters served to all of them last month it was stated that Cogta planned to charge them “for intentionally violating” the department’s labour relations policy which reads: any lunchtime meeting requires approval for as long as it is held within the employer’s scope of operations. Maho said they were not aware of such policy. Cogta spokesman Mamnkeli Ngam yesterday said the planned hearing yesterday and today was postponed by the Port Elizabeth Labour Court “to afford Cogta more time to respond to some allegations levelled against it by the suspended shop stewards”. —