In a letter the Herald has seen, the municipal manager, Lebu Ralekgetho, announced that there would be a delay in the payment of overtime to municipal employees for March.
According to the letter, the reason for the delay was the late submission of overtime sheets by various departments, and discrepancies the finance department had identified in the current overtime claims.
“Based on the reasons highlighted above, there will be an interim payment on 7 April, to process over time, once the discrepancies and irregularities are addressed with relevant directors,” the letter reads.
In some areas, this has led to domestic waste not being removed.
Residents took to social media to ask about the non-collection of refuse. Some said the areas had suffered from non-collection because the employees were unhappy about the decision to delay the payment of overtime.
The Herald previously reported that the municipality’s overtime payments had escalated to an unsustainable level with J.B. Marks spending over R60 million on overtime in the last eight months. Documentation the Herald has seen shows that, in some cases, employees had claimed up to 200 hours of overtime per month. In a previous article, the Herald also reported that at least one employee had claimed 102 double-time hours in August 2019. The municipality only pays double-time for Sundays and public holidays. When the finance department processed the payments in August, there had only been three Sundays and one public holiday, which, in effect, meant that the employee had claimed that he had worked 25 hours on each of these days.
“I have heard about the strike. I am not sure what the issue is. If the overtime that employees have claimed is within legal limits, it must be paid to the workers. There is a list of employees who have clearly been paid undue overtime. Those employees must be acted against. I don’t understand why the municipal manager is targeting everyone. It is ridiculous,” Hans- Jurie Moolman, the DA Caucus chairperson, said.
By the time of going to print the municipality had not responded to the Herald’s enquiries.
