State merry-go-round

SIR — I refer to the article Unstable SAA gets another acting CEO (August 4). Once again, we see our government playing musical chairs with public sector employees and stateowned enterprises.

As each employee is appointed, another is suspended on full pay and a further one is dismissed — and then takes the enterprise to court.

The government’s budget is almost half made up of salaries. Over and above this, more than R60m was spent over the past year on suspended employees. For some reason, our government was unable to assess whether these suspended employees had done anything wrong and to take the necessary step to go to a disciplinary inquiry. All of this, despite the public service having a code of practice that dictates disciplinary hearings must be held within 60 days.

As a labour lawyer, I often encounter governmental employees who have been on suspension much longer than 60 days.

The worst part of all of this is that the Department of Labour, the very department that should be enforcing labour law, has suspended more than a dozen employees at a cost of more than R5m. It is shocking to note that the chief director of legal services in the Department of Labour received almost R3m while not working.

The private sector could never tolerate such excesses and would probably not survive if they behaved in that way. It is easy for the government to do it as income tax covers all these various ills.

Michael Bagraim

Cape Town