Good Business Basics: What of the cushiest job in the world?

As if senior posts in the civil service and state owned enterprises were not the epitome of ‘cushiness’, a new perk comes along to make them even more ‘cushy’ – suspension on full pay. Two recent reports caught my eye, the first being the head of Gauteng’s health department Pelegeng Lebeloane, who has earned R4.7-m while on suspension since 2019.

The second was a written parliamentary response that Minister Pravin Gordhan gave, that revealed that over R300-m had been paid to employees of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), who were on suspension over the past three years. Given this astonishing statistic, it comes as no surprise that the serial offenders are members of that rogues gallery of failed or failing SOEs headlined by Eskom, SAA, Denel and Transnet, with lesser known but similarly delinquent ones such as South Africa Forestry Company Limited (SAFCOL) and diamond miner Alexcor.

No surprise because the sheer lack of urgency and fiduciary application is the hallmark of management and board ineptitude and mismanagement that placed these enterprises in the parlous states they find themselves in.
In the case of Eskom, it is incomprehensible that given their horrific financial situation, they still saw fit to pay over R66-m to 228 suspended employees in the 2020/21 financial year and nearly R190-m in the 2019/22 financial years.

We are told that Eskom is now aiming to address outstanding disciplinary issues more ‘effectively and timeously’. No doubt the Eskom gravy train is fully loaded with legal and HR practitioners who have absolutely no interest in speedily concluding these labour issues. The sobering thing is, the figures I have presented above cover just a few SOEs, and one provincial government.

Dig a bit deeper into the data and one will discover the same across all nine provincial government departments, every single national government department, and every single local and district municipality in the country. The numbers involved will easily fill a decent sized convention centre.

Minister Gordhan now says that the law should be changed to ‘limit pay for suspended employees or ensure shorter suspension periods’. Notwithstanding the question that springs to mind ‘why now?’ and the hundreds of millions of money lost by the State, is this really fair?

All evidence seems to point to a total lack of urgency, commitment and fiduciary rigour on the part of boards and management at SOEs and much the same from line managers (DGs and Chief Directors) at provincial and national departments.

So, why should affected employees be prejudiced, as logic would dictate that most of them would want to resolve their issues and either move on or return to normal duties. Similarly, employers would want to be short of delinquent employees as quickly as possible so as not to prejudice the performance of the company or department.

Oh wait… I forget that we are talking about the government here.

Vijay Naidoo is the CEO of the Port Shepstone Business Forum. He writes in his personal capacity. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.

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