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UNION: DON’T MAKE HELMON A SCAPEGOAT

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MBABANE – Out-of-contract Sincephetelo Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (SMVAF) Chief Executive Officer Helmon Vilakati has an unlikely ally in his corner.


As Vilakati faces a Cabinet-sanctioned investigation into the payment of about E14 million in respect of seven years’ salary review backpay for SMVAF employees, a union that represents the workers has jumped to his defence.


The Swaziand Union of Financial Institutions and Allied Workers (SUFIAW), which has over the past couple of years been at loggerheads with Vilakati regarding the payout, feels that he should not be targeted for how the process went on.

SALARY REVIEW
Last week the Times SUNDAY revealed that Vilakati’s negotiations with the SMVAF Board for a new contract have been put on hold pending an investigation into three aspects of the salary review process.


The first aspect is why he failed to implement the review when it first came up in 2012; secondly, if the E14 million figure that was eventually paid to the employees was based on correct calculations; and lastly, how the entire negotiation process was conducted. The investigation has been sanctioned by the Standing Committee of Public Enterprises (SCOPE), which is chaired by the incumbent Minister of Finance, in this case being Neal Rijkenberg.


SUFIAW is of the view that it cannot stand aside and watch, but believes that they too should be involved in the investigation because it touches on them.
The union is of the view that if Vilakati is being probed for the salary review process, then he should not be the only one to be investigated but SCOPE and the SMVAF Board should also be scrutinised for their role in the matter.


Through its Secretary General, Jabu Shiba, the union said they were not in the business of defending Vilakati because “we believe that with the facts at his disposal on the matter, he will easily be able to deal with all concerns in the reported impending probe”. “As a trade union that is a party to the agreement on the subject matter, it would not be prudent to look the other way when serious concerns and inevitable insinuations that flow from the agreement so signed come up,” Shiba said.


She highlighted that the agreement between SMVAF and SUFIAW regarding the salary review was signed in August 2017 and subsequently sent to the Public Enterprises Unit where it stayed for about seven months without any feedback.


They said it was not until the workers went on strike that they got a response which was not even talking to the agreement that was submitted for approval.
The union said the effective date of the agreement was April 1, 2012 and they were baffled when a new one of April 1, 2017 was brought to the fore “because no request to that effect could have possibly been before whoever was approving”.


“Needless to say, we had to approach the court for an order to compel SMVAF to comply with all terms of the agreement, which one of the terms was the effective date of April 1, 2012,” said Shiba.


The secretary general said it was surprising that it was only when the media recently reported on the imminent arrest of Vilakati for failing to comply with a court order to effect the payment that employees were paid in terms of the effective date of the review report, which was April 1, 2012. 

“The Board cannot have been unaware that SMVAF had to comply with the court order in that regard unless it would have been comfortable with the arrest of its CEO for saving it from the embarrassment of SMVAF having been found off-side. We believe that the Board was aware every step of the way,’ Shiba said.


She wondered what report the PEU, through SCOPE, were looking at when approving implementation of the report from April 1, 2017 and April 1, 2012.
“This is because all the questions and concerns that are now coming up ought to have been raised then,” she said.
But the more pertinent question that the union wants answered is not so much about the payment, instead what they want to be tackled is the delay that was due to what they were told was the SCOPE process.


 “We are unimpressed about the operations of SCOPE, which is lethargic in its approach to issues affecting workers, where these have been submitted to that body and remain on their desk for months, while we are told that they are ‘still looking at them’—whatever that may mean,” Shiba said.
She continued: “Currently, there are matters of two institutions, where the union and the employers therein, reached agreements over six months back, but still the issues are outstanding, supposedly because ‘the minister is still considering them’.


The secretary general said as a union, they had resolved that they would  deal with such inefficiency through the courts or through industrial action to encourage whoever was in charge of the  PEU through the SCOPE process to be focussed and efficient.


“We have brought such conduct, which is a threat to industrial harmony, much against the often-stated remarks of government to create such harmony, to the attention of His Excellency the prime minister and hope that he will take the necessary action and we see action more than words,” Shiba said.
She stated that a probe of the operations of SCOPE to deal with the bottlenecks would have been more appropriate and urgent.

IRREGULAR AGREEEMents
Adding, Shiba said any probe around the SMVAF salary review payout “would not be complete without our involvement, especially because our members at the institution get the sense that we are an organisation that is a party to irregular agreements”.


As revealed last week, the team to carry out the probe will be led by Regional Excellence Development Initiative (REDI) Director Dr. Sikhomba Gumbi, and its members include former Eswatini TV Board Chairperson Nozizwe Mulela, prominent lawyer Mangaliso Magagula from Magagula Hlophe law firm and Edward Sithole, who is Nedbank Eswatini Human Resources Manager.


The team has been given a three-month period to carry out the investigation and, during that time, an interim CEO will be appointed to head SMVAF.
Negotiations for Vilakati’s new contract will only resume after the probe team has concluded its findings.








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