Metro gets tough over leave after audit woes

Employees who fail to follow the procedures will have to cough up

IN a bid to avoid another bad audit for its shambolic leave system, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has taken a tough stance and is deducting money from the salaries of staff who fail to submit attendance registers and leave forms.

The punitive measures follow two consecutive qualified audit opinions from the auditor-general for failing to ensure attendance registers and leave forms tallied up with the manual leave system.

Speaking at a human resources and corporate services portfolio committee meeting last week, executive director Vuyo Zitumane said their new strategy was aimed at ensuring that the municipality did not get another qualified audit for its leave system.

“We are trying to develop a standard operating procedure that every directorate must comply with.

“We are setting standards that every month all attendance registers and leave forms must be handed in by everyone and signed off by all executive directors by a certain date,” Zitumane said.

She said some employees’ salaries had had money deducted this month, but declined to say how many had been affected.

She said it was critical that all documents were submitted to ensure the system and documents added up.

“If you have days that are due to you that you do not [really] have, we must make sure that you have a proper reconciliation of what you have on the system, and leave that is taken.

“The only source document that you can use for this is an attendance register or a leave document,” Zitumane said.

“If we don’t get the leave form and we don’t get an attendance register, we take it that the person has not been at work and we will deduct from them,” she said.

“It’s a punitive measure and at some point we have to create a certain culture that every executive director has a responsibility of making sure that leave forms and attendance registers are submitted.” Zitumane said the municipality was also looking into adopting an electronic leave system.

However, it would require training, which would cause delays.

“This is the strategy that is taken to make sure that in the future we never ever have problems that have to do with leave. It is to ensure we have updated records on the system and accurate leave balances on the system.”

We are trying to develop a standard operating procedure