More Gupta employees fight for pay

YET another Gupta-owned company is embroiled in a bitter legal dispute over the non-payment of desperate employees since July.

Shiva Uranium employees have approached the Companies Tribunal of the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) in a bid to get their salaries for July, when they received only 30% of their pay, and for August, September and October, when they were not paid at all.

All employment benefit contributions (retirement fund contributions, insurance, outstanding taxes and statutory payments) have also not been paid since July.

The anxious employees joined Shiva Uranium business rescue practitioner Chris Monyela’s bid to have two other business rescue practitioners, Mahomed Mahier Tayob and Eugene Januarie, removed.

Monyela told the tribunal that Shiva Uranium chief executive George van der Merwe unlawfully appointed Tayob and Januarie in an attempt to disrupt the placing under business rescue of another former Gupta company.

Van der Merwe was also chief executive of two other Gupta-owned companies, Optimum Mine and Koornfontein Mines, under business rescue.

Tayob and Januarie responded to Monyela’s application, saying he failed to make a case for the relief he seeks and asked the tribunal to grant them a punitive costs order against him.