The minister of trade, industry and competition, Parks Tau, has remained mum on various serious issues raised by employees of the troubled National Lotteries Commission (NLC).
The employees have thus resorted to lunchtime peaceful protest action to air their grievances against the NLC management and board.
In their communique to Tau, the workers, through the Public Servants Association (PSA), list a myriad of issues, including governance failures and service delivery crises within the NLC.
The employees are also pushing to have a 7% salary increment instead of 4.4% and 2.6% as proposed by the employer.
If their demands are not met, the PSA has threatened to ramp up the protest action with a march to the offices of the minister come May 7 to deliver a memorandum of demands.
The letter to Tau by PSA claims that issues such as corruption, fraud, nepotism, and mismanagement that workers had raised in 2018 were yet to be uprooted.
“These issues persist, with many Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition (DTIC) officials and associates now in key positions, perpetuating misconduct. The PSA cannot remain silent while the NLC deteriorates further,” reads the letter to Tau, which we have seen.
The PSA further alleges that NLC is failing to fulfil its service delivery objectives because of premature implementation of an online system that has created technical challenges, obstructing funding processes.
As if that is not enough, the NLC was suffering from the absence of a structured organisational framework that has led to arbitrary appointments, bloating the workforce and increasing inefficiencies, the PSA charges.
The workers go on to add that the NLC policies are inconsistently applied and weaponised against those least favoured by management while relaxed for a select few who are deemed favourites of the head honchos.
This is exacerbated by appointments and secondments that are made without transparency, giving birth to blatant favouritism and instability within the NLC, the PSA goes on.
“The board has held excessive meetings, incurring high costs, yet service delivery continues to decline.
“Requests for transparency on board expenditures and funding allocations remain unanswered. The NLC is struggling to meet targets in terms of their organisational performance management scorecard,” the employees wrote to Tau.
“The current regime has taken an approach to treat old NLC employees with a lack of respect, subjecting them to integrity testing, and when management fails to get the number they were hoping for, employees are subjected to arbitrary lifestyle audits.
“Given the gravity of these issues, we request an urgent meeting with you to discuss immediate corrective actions. Should there be no intervention, the PSA will have no choice but to escalate its efforts, including a march to the DTIC on the 07th May 2025 despite management efforts to silence employees.”
Sunday World has seen an auditor general report on the NLC revealing that board audit committee members were racking in monies far above the National Treasury approved rates.
The report shows that the NLC Audit Committee chair is approved by National Treasury to claim R44,000 but they have been claiming four times that rate without a logical explanation.
“There was no evidence that the applied rates were approved by the board,” reads the AG report.
