Court workers unpaid for two months

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) is expected to meet next week with the provincial management of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development over unpaid salaries of contracted workers at the Durban Magistrate’s Court.

The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) is responsible for the payments which have not been made to a subcontractor, resulting in 56 employees of a cleaning company not being paid.

Nehawu KZN deputy secretary Ntokozo Nxumalo said the department contracted a construction company for the renovation of the Durban Magistrate’s Court. The construction company then subcontracted to another company for the cleaning services.

“It usually happens that contractors are not paid, especially right after the beginning of the financial year. If they were working for the government, this would not be a problem because they would have means to pay the workers until the issues are resolved.

“Outsourcing of services cripples the work because when situations like these arise, they sometimes do not have enough back-up to pay their workers for at least three months,” said Nxumalo.

The owner of the subcontracted company said they had received letters from Public Works saying they will be paid.

“We were first promised payment on May 7 then another letter said it would be on May 14.”

“I spoke to my workers, I told them that we have not received payments and I asked them to bear with me until we get our payment, and if they cannot, they are welcome to quit.

None of them left,” said the owner of the cleaning company.

She said they have now been promised that they will be paid on Monday.

An employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it has been a difficult two months for her and her family.

“We have families to take care of and transport costs so we can travel to work. Life has been at a standstill without our salaries.”

Department of Public Works and Infrastructure spokesperson Lennox Mabaso said the department had fallen prey to a cyberattack.

“We are victims of a cyberattack and we were then forced to shut down our systems.

“This affected our payments. We were notified by our banks about this attack and we had to protect the state.

We did, however, notify and apologise to our creditors as soon as we were made aware of the issue.

“Companies are cash-backed but they ought to make arrangements to at least pay their workers for three months. As soon as we get the green light from law enforcement, as they are still investigating the threat, the department will cash-back the creditors,” said Mabaso.

He said government departments often fall prey to cyberattacks, especially at the beginning of a financial year, as it’s known that departments have money that is to be used for various projects at that time. He said law enforcement agencies are still investigating.

Spokesperson for the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development Chrispin Phiri said: “We are in the same boat with the contractor, we hope the issue will be resolved soon because we want the renovations to be finished. We are simply clients to the DPWI, there is not much we can do.”

The Mercury