RSSC WORKERS PAID E0.00 SALARY FOR APRIL

MHLUME – Salaries are due to be paid this coming Wednesday at Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation (RSSC) but some employees of the giant sugar-manufacturing company will not bother visiting the banks.

This is because their payslips for the month of April, which have already been issued, reflect that they would get E0.00 as a salary for this month. The official communication from the company is that the money has been deducted from the worker’s April wages by the Swaziland Revenue Authority (SRA) to settle a tax debt dating back to July last year.

RSSC workers, especially those in lower positions and seasonals, had been receiving untaxed food rations and this was uncovered by SRA, when it conducted a tax audit on the company last year.

As such, the ‘tax collector’ has decided to effect a once-off tax deduction, that will be backdated to July last year, on all RSSC employees that had been receiving untaxed food rations.

The sad news was broken to the workers by the Human Resources department in a memo issued last Wednesday. “Following the results of the tax audit conducted by SRA that rations should be taxed, backdating from 1st July 2017, the taxation of the rations will be effected in the April 2018 payroll. All employees who are entitled to rations (T01-T06 permanents, seasonals and casual) will be taxed effective from this month,” reads part of the memo issued by Bheki Maziya, the company’s head of human resource operations.

According to a union official, RSSC had initially objected to the taxation of food rations for the lower paid workers but it eventually agreed to comply after a failed court bid.

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