JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Tuesday 18.20pm
SUSPENDED Mpumalanga Parks Board chief Alan Gray won a third reprieve on Tuesday when his legal team managed to stall his disciplinary hearing yet again.
Independent presiding officer Kobus Lowies postponed Gray’s disciplinary hearing on 22 separate misconduct and mal-administration charges indefinitely on Tuesday following a legal challenge against the MPB’s authority to discipline Gray.
Gray’s high-powered legal team insisted during two days of often strained legal argument that the MPB had no legal power to suspend of otherwise discipline Gray because it never appointed him and was therefore not his employer.
Gray was appointed by former provincial environmental affairs MEC, David Mkhwanazi.
“It’s a very technical argument but is undeniable. The entire hearing will have to be scrapped if we prove that the MPB has no jurisdiction in the case,” said Gray’s attorney, Pieter Swanepoel.
MPB chairman Francis Legodi confirmed the hearing was postponed indefinitely to allow Lowies to deliver a detailed written judgement on Gray’s objections.
The 22 disciplinary charges were brought against Gray when he was suspended nine months ago during the height of the R1,3-billion promissory note scandal that also cost provincial finance MEC Jacques Modipane and provincial environmental MEC Fish Mahlalela their jobs. — African Eye News Service