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TEACHER’S E800 MONTHLY ‘TOP-UP’ IN GOVT HOUSE

19/10/2019 00:14:00 BY TIMOTHY SIMELANE

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MBABANE – A teacher has been paying a top-up fee of E800 monthly for a leased government house, an act that government said was unauthorised and warranted investigation.

The teacher, who was identified as Nqobile Mndzebele, and teaches at Elangeni High School was allocated a two bedroom house at Ngwane Park in Manzini since 2015.

It was leased by VJR Agencies to government.
Differing versions have been advanced on whether the Ministry of Public Service knew about the illegal top-up payments which went on for about two years.
However, Mndzebele said she vacated the house at the end of September this year after she was alerted about the unusual nature of the top-up arrangement.
She said when she started staying in the house in December 2015, no one spoke to her about the top-up.

However, in January of the following year she was alerted that she was liable for the top-up fee.

Extra

“I was informed by a housing official that government did not have enough money to pay for the whole rent, which implied that I pay an extra E800 as top-up. I was so desperate for accommodation that I ended up agreeing.

“I was paying the E800 to VJR in Manzini faithfully until sometime in 2017 when it became difficult for me to continue paying. I had debts given that I had embarked on a project of building my home.

“I went to the ministry of Public Service and informed them that I was no longer able to pay the E800 because I had other responsibilities. The officer who attended to me said it was illegal to pay any top up.

rental

Information availed to Eswatini News was that initially; the monthly rental paid by government was E2 700.
However, later on, the contract between government and VJR Agencies was renewed and the amount went up to E3 033.85.

Mndzebele said after she stopped paying the top-up fee, and reporting this to the ministry, she was informed that the anomaly would be rectified.
She said there was a lull in communication with the ministry until last month when she was informed; allegedly by a VJR agent that the owner of the house was not pleased with the short payments made and had cancelled the contract. “I then left the house and eventually went searching for alternative accommodation,” she said.

Mndzebele said she was staying with her mother and children in the house.
She showed Eswatini News one of the receipts she had been given by VJR when she paid the E800 in one of the months.
She said though she had voluntarily paid the money without the knowledge that she did not have to, she would appreciate a refund as the E800 monthly had accumulated to E19 200.

Information and Communications Officer of the Ministry of Public Service Hlobsile Vilakati said the ministry was not aware that there was a government employee paying top-up fee.

“Actually, as public servants we pay rent according to the lease agreement, nothing more and nothing less. In this case, we do not know what agreement the estate agent had with the civil servant involved. The ministry will look into the matter,” she said.

unusual

Vilakati also insisted she was confident that the occupancy survey would also assist to discover such unusual cases, though the exercise was mainly aimed at establishing if the one occupying the house was legitimately placed there.
“Otherwise, we have no legal obligation to interfere with any gentlemen’s agreement made between the occupier and the house owner, especially if none of them reported an anomaly,” she said.

Meanwhile, The Managing Director of VJR Brian Martin said he had no knowledge of the issue when Eswatini News described it to him. He said he would investigate and find out how the top-up agreement was reached.
Asked if there were similar incidents that VJR dealt with before, he said there were only a few that happened some time ago, but did not have enough information on them.

Meanwhile, government has been forced to pay at least E100 million to owners of private properties to honour lease agreements where government workers are accommodated.

Last month, the ministry asked for a supplementary budget of E60 million from the Ministry of Finance for institutional houses to ensure that civil servants still had a roof over their heads.

To survive the impasse, the broke government has since embarked on a process to terminate housing contracts with private owners.
This effectively implies that when a government official vacates a privately owned house due to retirement or otherwise, government would terminate the contract and return the keys to the lessor or house owner without allocating it to another employee.

In a letter written by the then the former acting Principal Secretary Constance Tsabedze, informed a house owner that the ministry was terminating a lease agreement as at August 26, 2019, because “the occupant has vacated the house and government has resolved to terminate all leased houses that become vacant in an effort to save money,” the acting PS has said.