The financial mismanagement and acts of fraudulent activities at Mmabatho High School are not going to be dealt away with any time soon. This is according to the department of employment and labour’s UIF report.
The report dubbed the “Follow the Money Report” follows hot on the heels of acts of dissatisfaction from staff members who felt hard done by the school management as far as their UIF-TERS compensations during the 2020/21 lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Some employees were forced to work from home at the time. Mo Media is in possession of the report from the Office of the Commissioner, who instituted the UIF internal verifi¬cation team that is also known as the “money team.” They are to perform a veri¬fication exercise on all employers who are suspected of fraud and respond to any “follow the money” enquiries.
The verifi¬cation of 31 employees was conducted and it was established that during lockdown levels three and four, the school’s financial handlings were non-compliant. According to the report, it was discovered that the employer (Mmabatho High School) made an invalid claim for three security employees who were working full-time and not affected by the lockdown. The other area of concern was that the applications for COVID-19-TERS were accepted by UIF for SGB posts.
It was noted that the school was operating on more than R200 000.00 de¬ficit from January 2020. The school had also applied for non-qualifying employees claims to the tune of R70 077.63 for essential services and a second calculation amount to R140 997.23 for an application made for August and September 2020 when the school was fully operating.
The findings contained in that report also state that there are fraud indicators that the school management has intentionally applied for employees who were working full-time and they (school management) acted negligently for not paying the refund on time.
The report, signed by the team leader, Deputy Director OUIC on the 10th October 2021, concludes that the COVID19-TERS claim was not entirely valid and the payment was not distributed on time to the employees, which led to the non-compliance to the Memorandum of Agreement signed by both parties.
The report also contains a recommendation that emphasizes that the Department of basic education should conduct a thorough investigation on whether the section 21 grant was utilised properly as the salaries of the SGB employees were paid using the section 21 grant. “The scope of the investigation should also include the management of the school funds,” stated the report.
The general public in Mahikeng needs to be reminded that the school made headline news in 2021 when it was discovered that ESKOM disconnected its electricity supply due to the school owing their electricity bill to the tune of over R800 000.00 and municipal rates and water bill to over R1 200 000.00.
The report has since been handed to the SIU (Special Investigative Unit) for implementation of the recovery of funds which were acquired illegally and or fraudulently. It was also recommended that an amount of R211 074.23 should be collected by UIF through the SIU and invalid claims for security amounting to R70 077.63 should also be recovered while R140 997.23 for COVID19-TERS for August and September should also be recovered.
