SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa’s High Court is to be asked to remove several senior Public Servants in the Ministry of Public Works after the Minister, Patricia de Lille (pictured), said the officials had been irregularly appointed.
Ms De Lille’s move follows a Public Service Commission (PSC) investigation into 688 staff appointments.
Her spokesperson, Zara Nicholson said the PSC reviewed the appointments of senior staff, middle managers and lower staff.
“The Commission’s report flagged 12 senior managers who were irregularly appointed and called for their appointments be set aside,” Ms Nicholson said.
“The report also recommended that officials who were involved in the appointments of those senior officials face disciplinary action.”
She said the application to review and set aside the appointments had been served to all affected senior managers; filed at court and was now waiting for the affected employees to file the answering papers.
“The disciplinary action against the members of the appointments panel were initiated and scheduled during the last week of May,” Ms Nicholson said.
“However, they were postponed until further notice due to certain procedural aspects of the process and this has now been resolved.”
She said the PSC had not yet concluded the second phase of the probe into appointments of middle managers and lower officers.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Public Service and Administration, Senzo Mchunu has blamed the Government’s failure to fill vacancies in the PS on the delays that came with the installation of the new administration.
He said there were more than 100,000 vacancies in National and Provincial Departments with Education, Health and Social Development the hardest hit.
“It’s a challenge, but it is a challenge that various Ministers are dealing with,” Mr Mchunu said.
Under questioning he admitted there were “thousands” of unemployed teachers, nurses and social workers sitting at home while the Government had the available jobs.
Pretoria, 17 August, 2019
