OP disgrace

BAME PIET
Staff Writer | Friday March 29, 2013 00:00

 

As it turns out, it could be three years before their queries are referred to the relevant government departments. All in the name of security reasons. Retired civil servant Ruth Mguni-Nyathi rues the day she approached the OP for intervention in what she views as unfair treatment or cheating by the system.

Upon retiring in July 2009, Mguni-Nyathi wrote a letter (dated 9 September 2009) to Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP), Eric Molale, complaining about what she considered unfair treatment at the hands of the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, Opelo Makhandlela.

The nub of her grievance was unfair remuneration regardless of her experience of 30 years as a lecturer. She was sidelined by Teaching Service Management (TSM), she wrote to Molale.

'Right now, I have retired earning a D2 salary scale whereas other heads of department like me who were given scarce skills retired earning a D1 salary,' complained. 'I have been denied scarce skill given to other Heads of Department with a scarce skill like mine.

'As an Agriculture Lecturer whose subject was considered scarce, some heads of department for Agriculture even now earn a D1 salary, which started in 1999, but for me I have been earning D2 salary since 1999.'

Mguni-Nyathi wrote a follow-up letter to the same person some time in 2011. However, the former lecturer at Tlokweng College of Education only got a response from the OP in August 2012, three years after lodging the complaint.

'I am still baffled that clients are treated this way when everybody is preaching service delivery,' she told Mmegi this week. In response by a letter dated 8 August 2012, the PSP wrote: 'We refer to your letters dated 16th November 2011. Your file has been transferred to Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) in accordance with Section 18 of the Public Service Act, 2008.

'You are therefore kindly advised to make follow-up on this case with DPSM. Any inconvenience caused by this development is deeply regretted.'  Mguni-Nyathi is still in shock that the OP should have taken three years to respond, and even then in the form of a mere referral to another department.

Mguni-Nyathi's odyssey began in 2008 when she complained to the Ombudsman about what she termed 'cheating by the education system'. She was on the same salary band with other lecturers who had approached the High Court to challenge a TSM decision excluding them in the scarce skills category.

However, when the High Court ruled in their favour, she and two others were excluded on the grounds that they were not applicants in the case. She argues that in a similar case in which another lecturer had successfully challenged entry requirements for senior lecturers, the ruling was applied to correct other anomalies. Her argument is that the ruling should have similarly applied to include she and others.

She accuses TSM of cheating them and denying them opportunities of better remuneration, promotions and allowances.A spokesman of the Office of the Ombudsman, Fenny Letshwiti, told Mmegi yesterday: 'Yes, we are aware of a complaint made to this office by the above-named and a complaint to the employer albeit copied to us together with other institutions.

'Our records indicate that we formally acknowledged the receipt of Mrs Ruth Nyathi's complaint at the initial stages when she brought the complaint to us in October 2008.

'Our records further reveal that during our investigative process, we telephonically updated her by sharing with her the responses from the departments concerned to inform her of our follow-ups.'      

Letshwiti added that somewhere along the line, there was a communication breakdown between his office and the complainant, 'which resulted in us being unable to update her about progress made and challenges encountered in her matter'.  He continued: 'As our investigations can sometimes take a long time, some complainants are aggrieved by this and end up losing interest or exploring other avenues, e.g. courts of law, without formally informing us and only for them to resurface later.

'In Mrs Nyathi's case, we have been unable to determine the cause of this communication gap. Our door remains open for the complainant to come back for further consultation.'

Contacted for comment, government spokesperson Dr Jeff Ramsay, who was travelling from Chanoga last night, said he was not aware of the complaint and then referred Mmegi to newly appointed Private Secretary to the President, Masego Ramakgathi.