Dread descends on BFA
Mqondisi Dube | Friday April 6, 2018 13:55
The BFA has embarked on a restructuring exercise, which will result in retrenchment as the mother body moves to ensure sustainability.
BFA’s wage bill gobbles the annual P5.4million subvention from the government, leaving the association unable to carry-out other operations.
This has triggered the restructuring exercise that was supposed to kick-in at the beginning of this month but has now been moved to May due to unforeseen complications.
BFA chief executive officer, Mfolo Mfolo said he had met with the employees and the second stage is to look at the organisation’s structure.
“We will then move to the job descriptions to see which ones could be collapsed. The consultation took place, and we now expect implementation in the second week of May.
We are at a critical stage where we have to call in a counsellor to talk to those who will be affected by the exercise,” Mfolo said.
He would not state how many employees are likely to be affected or what the ideal wage bill would be.
Mfolo bemoaned a lack of a salary structure at BFA, and said there were no caps for most positions.
“It is a situation I found and I have to look at. We have to look at the wage bill,” Mfolo said.
He described the whole exercise as “tricky” emphasising that all due labour processes have to be followed.
Mfolo said the restructuring exercise was necessary as the association is effectively achieving less with more, when the ideal situation would be to achieve “more with less”.
He added that the situation was unhealthy and it meant that the BFA relied on the FIFA grant for sustenance.
The BFA is P10 million in the red and when the Maclean Letshwiti administration took over in 2016, there were promises of turning the situation around.
Letshwiti promised to, both direct and indirectly, create 5,000 jobs. However, the efforts have often been hampered by challenges which include the huge wage bill and cases of corruption, where two employees were recently dismissed over P600,000 fraud.