BARBERTON – Umjindi Municipality and Mandlakazi Electrical Technologies (MET) officials were left red-faced last week when they finally swallowed their pride and offered a six-month settlement agreement to a contract employee who had repeatedly claimed that he had been unfairly sacked as community liaison officer (CLO).
Now Mxolisi Ndlovu is contemplating legal actions against the two parties for also unfairly terminating his company subcontract.
Barberton Times has learned that Ndlovu and MET were supposed to meet for arbitration at Metal and Engineering Industry Bargaining Council on September 11. But the parties had a gentleman’s agreement, reaching a settlement of six months’ salary before the meeting.
Ndlovu was initially employed as the project CLO for MET when work resumed on-site in January this year. MET was awarded a multi-million-rand tender to install bulk electricity supply for KaMadakwa-Ndlovu and Emjindini Trust residents in December last year. It resumed work in January. In March, barely three months after Cllr Meshack “Taylor” Nsimbini took over as the member of the mayoral committee for technical services, he allegedly went to the site and verbally told him that he (Ndlovu) should vacate his position as CLO.
At the time, Nsimbini said the termination of Ndlovu’s employment contract as CLO was merely because it was a conflict of interest, as he had also been awarded a subcontract by MET. He said no one could be a liaison officer and have a subcontract at the same time.
Ndlovu’s solely owned Madakwa Construction CC had been appointed to do excavation for line-meter poles, installations, backfilling and compacting.
At the time, Lindiwe Sibande, MET director of administration, declined to comment on the issue, saying Ndlovu’s appointment as CLO had been approved by the council as part of the tender.
As for the termination of his contract, she said, “As for his subcontract being terminated, Nsimbini came to a site meeting and told us that the council didn’t deal with tenders that were not registered on its supply-chain database and we had to terminate Ndlovu’s until he could prove that he was on the database.”
In Barberton Times of April 17, through a source, it was reported that the appointment of Nsimbini, who also served as ANC chief whip and councillor for Ward 8, was a strategic one as he would be in charge of most of the projects. “As the MMC of technical services he would be involved in all the tenders awarded,” the source said.
Ndlovu said though the money was paid by MET, Umjindi was somehow involved. “If MET knew that they terminated my contact legally, why do they have to settle for a gentleman’s agreement? This clearly show that Umjindi officials were involved somewhere. That’s why I’m now contemplating legal action against the termination of my contract,” said Ndlovu.
Attempts to obtain comment from Umjindi and MET were unsuccessful at the time of going to print.
