A total of 471 civil servants continued to be paid their salaries while on suspension as at the end of July.
This was revealed by Public Service and Administration Minister Mzamo Buthelezi when he was responding in writing to parliamentary questions from EFF MP Sixolise Gcilishe.
“Information captured on the Personnel Salary System (Persal) as at the end of July 2024 indicates that 288 public servants from national departments and 183 from provincial departments are on paid suspension,” Buthelezi said.
He said 54 employees were suspended for a period of longer than one year.
“The longest period that a public servant has spent while on paid suspension in the 2023/24 financial year is five years.”
Of the 54 civil servants on paid suspension, at least 32 have been suspended for more than a year, and 16 have been on suspension for more than two years.
One has been on suspension for more than three years, four less than five years and one for more than five years.
Buthelezi said cases of civil servants on suspension longer than three years were recorded by the Department of Defence, the Department of Higher Education and Training, the National Prosecuting Authority, the Gauteng Department of Economic Development and Human Settlements as well as the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education.
The 54 employees on suspension, 17 were from the education sector and eight were from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
Buthelezi explained that the cases in the education sector and NPA were considered complex cases and could not be finalised within the prescribed period.
“In the education sector, cases involving teachers committing sexual transgressions against learners are referred to the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC) and these teachers cannot be considered for precautionary transfers. The ELRC indicated it has a backlog of cases, which impacts the finalisation of cases,” he said.
“Some of the cases in the NPA involve allegations of corruption, fraud and financial investigations and prosecutors cannot be considered for precautionary transfers. Some of the cases in the NPA were delayed due to attempts to interdict the disciplinary process and by challenging suspensions,” Buthelezi said.
Earlier this month, the minister said his department was taking a new directive for discipline management, including the transfer of suspended officials to other departments or units.
“The department wants to ensure that while every senior and qualified and competent official is undergoing disciplinary processes, they don’t just sit at home on suspension but they are transferred to other departments or units for them to use their skills and qualifications to benefit that unit while they are on suspension,” he said.
Buthelezi said the new directive encouraged timely hearings and precautionary transfers to ensure compliance with applicable timeframes for resolution processes.
The Public Service and Administration Department earlier this month also reported a 53% decrease in long-overdue disciplinary case backlogs, attributed to a pilot project launched late last year.
At the ethics week launch in Pretoria, Salomon Hoogenraad-Vermaak, chief director of the Public Administration Ethics, Integrity, and Disciplinary Technical Assistance Unit, said that by the end of March the department had identified 250 long-standing cases in national departments.
“When we were done, the two people allocated with the work uplifted 133 cases, which is a 53% resolution rate. For provinces, we identified 172 cases that they resolved and they could manage to resolve 40% of their cases,” Hoogenraad-Vermaak said.
He said based on what they had introduced from the beginning of the 2024/25 financial year on case backlogs, there was a definite decrease in registered disciplinary cases on Persal.
“We also found that the suspensions decreased considerably,” Hoogenraad-Vermaak said.
Cape Times