In a labour case dating back to 2012, Limpopo Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba could face a jail sentence or pay a fine for contempt of court if she does not give a satisfactory answer to the Labour Court for why her department ignored a judgment to increase employees’ salaries.
Although the matter started in 2012, long before Ramathuba was appointed MEC, it is now binding on her as the current accounting officer, reports News24.
In the 12 August Labour Court judgment, Ramathuba and the second respondent (Limpopo provincial government) must appear on 18 November this year to explain why they defied the court’s 15 November 2021 ruling.
The judgment said that “in the absence of an explanation to the satisfaction of the court or failing to appear … the respondents may be held in contempt of court and the first respondent incarcerated for such a period as the court deems appropriate, or fined an amount deemed appropriate”.
The Public Service Co-Ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) resolved in 2012 to allow employees whose posts were evaluated and deserved to be on salary levels 10 and 12 to be appointed and paid on those salary levels.
However, when the Department of Public Service & Administration (DPSA) issued a directive on 25 February 2013 to implement the resolution, the Public Servants’ Association (PSA) complained about the exclusion of corporate services employees.
The PSA then declared a dispute on 14 May and referred the matter to the bargaining council for arbitration. Subsequently, the PSCBC ruled that the resolution should not be implemented in a staged or staggered approach or in a manner that differentiated between categories of employees, especially the corporate services employees.
The council also ruled that the DPSA must apply the resolution indiscriminately to all employees whose posts were evaluated on salary levels 10 and 12 by 1 August 2012 and to appoint and remunerate them accordingly on salary levels 10 and 12, respectively.
Limpopo Health, however, could not appoint the staff at salary levels 10 and 12 because of a 2009 DPSA circular preventing such appointments.
The employees were forced to approach the Labour Court on 17 August 2017 to declare the arbitration award be made an order of the court, which was granted on 21 November 2021.
State attorneys’ bungle
Provincial health spokesperson Neil Shikwambana blamed state attorneys for not filing papers for leave to appeal the judgment after its decision to do so as early as 16 November 2021.
“The department only learnt later that the leave to appeal had not been done. Then it was discovered that the Office of the State Attorney had actually filed the application to the wrong court – the Constitutional Court instead of the Labour Court, and also an email was used to file, which was the incorrect procedure. The department instructed the Office of the State Attorney to correct this by filing with the correct court using the right procedure.
“Subsequently, the Office of the State Attorney also delayed filing the leave to appeal in the correct court and the correction of the procedure until a senior counsel applied for condonation for the late filing of the leave to appeal and also include affidavits detailing the reasons for late filling,” he said.
After all these delays, Shikwambana said the employees’ lawyers ended up applying for contempt of court.
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