‘DIFFICULTIES’ IN RECOVERING E0.6M FROM EX-EBIS EMPLOYEE

MBABANE – The Ministry of ICT has not made any progress in recovering over E600 000 owed to government by former EBIS employee Thandiswa Ginindza.

instead, the ministry has said that it encountered difficulty in serving the ex-officer with summons. The reason, the ministry has said, was ‘certain difficulties’ encountered by the Office of the Attorney General. This is contained in the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology responses and updates on the Public Accounts Committee’s recommendation on the Auditor General’s Financial and Compliance Audit Reports on government accounts for the Year ended March 31, 2019.

Resignation

The officer, who was employed as a senior information officer, is said to have written a resignation letter on August 16, 2018, but her request was denied due to the fact that she was still serving a bonding agreement and was required to settle all outstanding debts due to government before exiting the civil service. The officer, according to findings made by the auditor general in 2019, went ahead and left the civil service when she was supposed to serve her bonding agreement from March 2018 to February 2023. The initial amount owed by the officer was E757 848.27. The AG reported that after appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in 2019, Ginindza had made only four payments amounting to E28 000 and thereafter, stopped.

It stated that the officer appeared before the PAC again in 2020 and submitted that she was willing to use her pension (about E60 000) to pay part of her debt and settle the rest through instalments. However, the AG said, Ginindza said she had a challenge because she believed the ministry was overcharging her since she had not studied for four years but had studied for three years after she was exempted from studying one of the years as she had a certificate-related to her field of study. It was also mentioned that while acknowledging her statement, the controlling officer of the ministry submitted that she had not engaged them on the issue, but simply stopped paying and only approached them when they were due to appear before the PAC.

The controlling officer explained, according to the AG, that the issue of years of study was a policy matter, which could not be decided overnight and that as far as the bond agreement was concerned; the officer had to pay the money. A recommendation that was given by the AG at the time was that since the PAC had given the officer another extension and she failed to stick to it, the controlling officer was urged to reinstate the matter in court and give a quarterly update on progress.

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