Montana’s exit symptomatic of how sick many of the country’s parastatals are
16 July 2015
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) notes today’s (Thurs 16 July) decision by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s (Prasa) board to axe the agency’s Chief Executive Lucky Montana. Numsa views Montana’s exit as symptomatic of how South Africa’s state-owned entities have become mired in maladministration, lack of accountability and looting that is pervasive in our country.
Montana’s axing comes a few days after Eskom cleared four executives of wrongdoing after they were suspended in March this year. His exit follows the recycling of other executives from one state entity into the other such as the re-appearance of Brian Molefe as an acting CEO of Eskom after a stint at Transnet.
What saddens Numsa is that this merry-go-round and swopping of executives takes place with little accountability and that those who leave have their palms greased with exorbitant golden handshakes. We hope that this will not be the case with Montana.
In the last few months, there have been many allegations of corruption levelled at Prasa’s chief executive. The latest has been the tender to supply 70 new high-tech Euro diesel locomotives awarded to a Spanish company Vossloh Group at a cost of R46-million each. Although the focus of the reports has been on the specification of the locomotives and the gap between the contact wire and the roof of the locomotives, Numsa has been concerned about the reports that Prasa failed to hedge on the deal and remained saddled with a R5-billion bill instead of the initial amount of R3.5-billion.
As a union that organise in state-owned enterprises we have found large-scale non-compliance with the local content requirements of the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA) and its Regulations leading to large scale importation and massive job losses in companies owned by local suppliers. In relation with the South African Class Afro 4000 diesel locomotives, we were concerned about how many local parts were to form part of these trains and why the initial shipment came in completely built from Europe.
It is because of this non-compliance by state-owned enterprises that as a union we have amongst many other issues filed for a Section 77 application for a socio-economic strike in terms of the Labour Relations Act (LRA). We are demanding that the National Treasury which is the department meant to ensure with compliance with the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA) to account and report on the impact of this non-compliance on local and existing jobs.
We hope that with Montana now gone all these issues and allegations will not be swept under the carpet. As Numsa, we are determined to get to the bottom of the Prasa board’s decision to let Lucky Montana go.
Statement issued by Irvin Jim ,NUMSA General Secretary, July 16 2015
