Scotch Tagwireyi
The University of the Witwatersrand is being taken to the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) by eight former employees who claim they were unfairly dismissed last month.
The dismissed workers from the catering, grounds and academic departments were accused of defrauding the university of more than R595 177.
According to the charge sheet, the workers unlawfully received university cheques made out to them. Some of the workers received up to 10 cheques.
University representative Martha Molete said: “Wits University had a disciplinary inquiry and eight people were dismissed. The matter is in the hands of our attorneys.”
But National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu), which is representing the dismissed workers, is contesting the outcome of the disciplinary inquiry at the CCMA.
Thabisa Motaung, Nehawu shop-steward at Wits, said: “I don’t understand how the university found these people guilty of fraud because they have nothing to do with money.”
According to one of the dismissed workers, who preferred not to be named, a staffer in the loans department was solely to blame.
“I needed R40 000 to pay a taxi owner after my son knocked into his taxi and they wanted to kill him,” she said.
She claimed loans department staffer Zelda Magau gave her application forms to complete and said the money would only be deducted from her pension fund after she resigned.
The dismissed workers say Magau disappeared after the disciplinary hearing and they are trying to track her down to strengthen their CCMA case.
They say Magau targeted illiterate staffers for her scam which involved making out cheques in other people’s names and getting them to cash them. They claim Magau then gave them a small percentage of the money and pocketed the rest.
One of the dismissed workers, Maureen Bezuidenhout, who has worked at Wits for seven years, said she received a loan of R20 000 but the university is demanding that she repay R120 000 which, according to their records, was the loan she received.
The other workers, some of them with almost 30 years of service, say they do not know what will happen to their pension funds and other benefits they accumulated.