Admin contractors claim they have not been paid for Covid-screening duties
They were told they were contracted by Wellness Odyssey,who would be the ones to pay them although they worked with professional nurses who were paid by a different organisation .
More than 50 aspirant admin employees, recruited during the vaccine roll-out to do admin for members of the Mpumalanga SAPS, were allegedly left high and dry without receiving their pay. They say no one is updating them as to when they will be paid.
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The frustrated recruiters from various part of Mbombela and the Highveld region said they were tired of being pushed from pillar to post regarding the payments for their services.
They said they were hired for admin and Covid-screening duties for almost two weeks, from July 8 to 21.
“In our contracts we were told we would be contracted by Wellness Odyssey, who would be the ones to pay us, although we worked with professional nurses who do the actual vaccinations, and they were paid by a different organisation at the end of every week.
“We completed forms of payment almost every week, but nothing had happened since; none of us had received their payments,” said Nomsa Nkosi, one of the recruitees. Nomfundo Nyalungwe, another employee, added that she had been unemployed since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic last year. She was glad to accept the temporary job, screening and capturing data for the men and women in blue, checking their temperatures and even risking her own life in the line of duty.
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“Some of us made loans to travel to work, and we failed to pay those people back because we never received any payments,” she said. An attempt to call the company’s landline proved fruitless, as the call went straight to voicemail. The company had not responded to a media inquiry at the time of going to press.
