New Great Kei boss gives lying letter to staff

BARELY a month after administrator Mzubanzi Silinga was roped in to stabilise the beleaguered Great Kei Municipality, he has come under fire for misrepresenting facts.

In a letter he sent to employees to forward to their creditors, he claims their May and June salaries were not paid due to a fire incident at the municipal offices.

However, Silinga is on record saying the municipality is bankrupt.

The SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) is livid over the non-payment of salaries for the two months.

And, just when workers were expecting double pay, nothing came of it yesterday except for the letter Silinga sent to staff, saying they should provide it to their creditors as the reason there was no money in their accounts.

In the letter, seen by the Daily Dispatch, the administrator says: “the municipality systems were not functioning to process the payments due to the fire incident – as such it was impossible to pay salaries on the scheduled dates of May 25 and June”.

This is in contradiction to what Silinga, who could not be reached for comment by print deadline yesterday, told the Dispatch about a fortnight ago: “The institution is bankrupt, such that employees were not paid their salaries for the month of May and councillors are not going to be paid [today] for the month of June, which points to the seriousness of the financial situation here.”

In the letter, Silinga further claims that the municipality is working around the clock to ensure staff salaries are paid by Friday after “rectifying the data and staff information”.

Samwu leader Luthando Juju said workers have been under enormous strain over the nonpayment debacle, so much so that “one of the employees died of stress last week and another has a family member to bury but has no money to cover the expenses”.

Juju said Samwu had declared a dispute in terms of Section 74 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, adding that the dispute was being discussed in the Local Labour Forum. —