Central SA
Non-payment of third-party contributions slammed─── LUCKY NKUYANE 10:05 Fri, 26 Aug 2022
The Congress of the South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has lamented the troubled Free State municipalities that allegedly continue not paying over third-party contributions, including pension funds and medical aid schemes.
Cosatu’s National Deputy General Secretary, Solly Phetoe, recently - without mentioning the names of these municipalities - lashed out at them for continuing to deduct monies from employees but failing to pay them over to the pension fund and medical aid. Phetoe said in some instances workers die or retire and these municipalities fail to pay out their benefits to workers or their families because monies were not paid to third parties.
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Recently the National Prosecution Agency’s (NPA) regional spokesperson, Phaladi Shuping, confirmed to OFM News that the former Municipal Manager (MM) and acting Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Masilonyana Municipality had previously appeared at the Commercial Crimes Court in Virginia on fraud and corruption allegations involving workers’ pension funds, running to the tune of R10 million.
In 2021, OFM News reported that the troubled Trompsburg-based Kopanong Local Municipality took three months to pay workers, following a Free State High Court judgment that attached the municipality’s bank account after they failed to pay workers' pension contributions to the South African Municipal Workers Union’s (Samwu) pension fund since 2012 - this was said to have been around R26 million at the time.
ALSO READ: FS municipal account attached
According to the document seen by OFM News, 15 municipalities, including the troubled Theunissen-based Masilonyana, the Welkom-based Matjhabeng, and the Qwaqwa-based Maluti-A-Phofung are being probed by the Hawks.
These municipalities are being probed for contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA). According to the documents, millions of rands were allegedly lost due to these actions and the Hawks are now going after the alleged perpetrators, including senior accounting officials such as municipal managers (MMs) and chief financial officers (CFOs).
The troubled Welkom-based municipality has a total of about nine cases, making it the municipality with the most cases, followed by Maluti-A-Phofung with eight cases probed by the Hawks.
