Another carrier to complain about ISG

MBOMBELA – A war of words and a barrage of accusations flew around recently as the boss of the beleaguered Innovative Solutions Group (ISG), Arnoux Maré, crossed swords with another of his clients, exposing more alleged irregularities in the company.
The former Pumas sponsor faced a liquidation application instituted by the rugby union in the Johannesburg High Court. The Pumas alleged that ISG did not pay their sponsorship fees and wanted the court to liquidate ISG. The company, a provider of services such as staff outsourcing, finance, administration, and taxation, was given until September 30 to file its opposing documents.
The company is also involved with the Komatipoort-based Izusa Carriers. Corridor Gazette previously reported that in June more than 100 former truck drivers of Izusa Carriers went on strike and threatened to block the N4 near Hectorspruit.
The truck drivers were demanding that the employer explain where their provident fund contributions and tax money went. This was after it was revealed to them they had not been paying tax or provident fund. A spokesman for ISG, Sya van der Walt-Potgieter, then responded that truck drivers were employed by Innovative Staffing Solution (ISS) until October 2018. Some 300 were contracted to Izusa to drive its trucks. The contract terminated after Izusa caused the former employees of ISS to be employed by Izusa itself, also paying their salaries.

“Izusa deducted UIF, tax and pension according to their payslips, but did in fact not do so, leaving the employers under the impression that it was deducted but not paid over.”

She added that this issue formed part of legal proceedings between ISS and Izusa.
Meanwhile, another trucking company came forward and claimed that the R2,2 million it paid over to ISG in March for the drivers working for Sutherland Transport in Port Elizabeth had not been paid into the workers’ bank accounts.
According to the trucking company’s CEO, Dawie van der Westhuizen, this alleged non-payment by ISG affected the lives of 600 people.

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He also alleged that two drivers provided by ISG, who were involved in road accidents, did not have valid driver’s licences. According to Van der Westhuizen, this resulted in a further loss of more than R4 million for Sutherland Transport, because the insurance refuses to pay out. Van der Westhuizen said his attorney would be busy formulating his legal documents to issue summonses within the following 10 days.
ISG and Maré recently made the news on a number of occasions. In addition to the Pumas debacle, Corridor Gazette’s sister publication Lowvelder featured allegations that ISG had not been properly managing deductions made from the earnings of employees employed by companies who had outsourced these functions to ISG. In reaction to this, Van der Walt-Potgieter stated that ISG would launch a full investigation to establish where the allegations come from, and described them as malicious.
Corridor Gazette emailed a list of questions to Maré about Van der Westhuizen’s claims. Maré then forwarded all the questions in a WhatsApp to Van der Westhuizen, and said he would rather discuss the problems between them than taking it to the media.
Van der Walt-Potgieter responded and said that

“Arnoux preferred not to answer the questions, but would rather communicate directly with Dawie van der Westhuizen of Sutherland.”

The spokesman then shared Maré’s WhatsApp communication with Van der Westhuizen with the newspaper.
Maré said, “I am aware of your talk with De Wet (the then editor of Lowvelder, De Wet Potgieter) and that you are trying to position ISG/ISS in a negative light in the media.

“My companies have ethical, transparent and professional relations with all of our clients, even after we ended our contracts with them, for whatever reasons it may be. I am thus disappointed that you prefer to discuss a one-sided story with the media.”

Maré added that he would also like to tell his side of the story, but declined to do so when prompted by Lowvelder.

“The difference is that my answers will be based on 100 per cent factual proof, documents, statements and affidavits – of which my attorneys have copies of all,” he said. Despite Lowvelder having repeatedly asked Maré to provide these, he had not done so at the time of going to press and indicated that he would no longer respond to media queries.

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Maré also listed a series of alleged wrongdoings committed by Sutherland Transport. He claimed that Sutherland treated its truck drivers so badly that ISS had to end the contract and handed the case over to the Department of Labour. Sutherland also only paid a part of the money owed to the ISG group.
Other accusations were that Sutherland fined its drivers so much for misdemeanours that they had no salary at the end of the month; that the trucking company endangered the drivers’ lives by tuning the brakes of the trucks in such a way to minimise the maintenance of the vehicles; Sutherland contacted the wives of the drivers with

“false information regarding disloyal and indecent acts with other ladies to force them to pay unreasonable fines”

and that Sutherland ordered its workshop to uncouple the truck trailers’ brakes, because the brakes do not last long enough.

“We explained the dangers of this to you,”

Maré states in his WhatsApp.

“Furthermore, my drivers reminded your section heads that the trucks are sometimes overloaded and that the heavy load – without brakes on the trailers – is dangerous for the drivers and other road users. We were told that this order came directly from you to save the company money.”

He added ISS could no longer stand back and be part of this “illegal and unacceptable” approach and thus cancelled its contract with Sutherland.According to Maré, all his drivers go through a stringent selection process and have valid driver’s licences.
He ended his WhatsApp to Van der Westhuizen by saying that, if he was prepared to talk,

“let me know by eight tomorrow and inform De Wet by eleven that you will not go ahead with this blatant smear article that would most likely end up in a libel case in court.”

Van der Westhuizen confirmed to Lowvelder that his response to this ultimatum was,

“Mooi, man…”
“I am not prepared to get caught up in talks with Maré,”

he said when asked to respond to Maré’s allegations.

“We are going the legal route and will issue summonses within days.”