Purged O R Tambo staff to get backpay

THE O R Tambo municipality is set to pay more than R3-million in backpay to 10 former municipal staff purged after the 2013 redeployment of the mayor.

And their union has now also signaled its intention to seek the reinstatement of the employees.

They were sacked after Mahlalela Myolwa was replaced by Nomakhosazana Meth as mayor. They were employed by the municipality on a fixed-term contract and attached to the mayor’s office as political appointees.

The appointments were in line with council resolutions of August 2006. The 10 challenged their dismissal through the South African Local Government Bargaining Council. A ruling by bargaining council arbitrator Malusi Mbuli stipulated that although they were political appointees they should have been allowed to finish their five-year contracts.

“The common practice is that most political appointees’ contracts are not terminated when the political incumbents they were linked to leave the office.”

Mbuli concluded that the applicants had been unfairly dismissed as their employment would have been terminated after the next elections, when their five-year contract ended.

South African Municipal Workers Union provincial organiser Vuyolwethu Mditshwa, who represented the 10 at the arbitration, welcomed the award but said the union had also applied for the workers to be reinstated.

He said Samwu was disappointed with how the municipality had handled their dismissal.

“This legal route should have been avoided. The ANC, especially at regional or provincial level, should have intervened.”

Mditshwa criticised the municipality for appointing a Durban lawyer to represent it as a waste of taxpayers’ money when there were competent officials who could do this. Attempts to get comment from the municipality were not successful at the time of writing yesterday.

Mbuli ordered the municipality to pay each worker 12 months’ salary, with one of the applicants, former political adviser to the then-mayor, Zama Mzamane, pocketing more than R1-million.

The former employees include the former mayor’s personal assistant, security personnel, and general assistant. —