Over the past two years, the South African government has spent millions of rand paying salaries to suspended officials.
Responding to a written parliamentary question and answer this week, Acting Minister of Public Service and Administration Thulas Nxesi noted that the government’s Personnel and Salary Management System (Persal) recorded 1,062 officials who were suspended between 2020/21 by 2021/22.
That excludes data from the Defense Department and the National Security Agency, he said.
During this time, various government departments paid out 131.2 million rand in wages. Officials were suspended from work for an average of 86 days, thus the salary was paid for three months of absence from work.
It should be noted that officials are removed from office for various reasons, which do not necessarily indicate guilt in an offense. The department did not specify which and how many deviations resulted in dismissal.
Most of the deviations occurred in national departments, with KwaZulu-Natal having the highest number of deviations in the provinces.
KwaZulu Natal also had the longest periods of suspension, with officials suspended with pay for an average of 170 days.
The tables below show the breakdown by province and the cost of suspended officials.
2020-2022 years
| State departments | No. Suspended | average days | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| National and Provincial Departments | 1 062 | 86 | 131,220,645 rupees |
2020/2021
| State departments | No. Suspended | average days | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| National | 315 | 64 | 26,771,901 rupees |
| KwaZulu Natal | 78 | 167 | 18,604,803 Rs |
| Western Cape | 22 | 69 | 1,738,867 rupees |
| Mpumalanga | 15 | 77 | 1,902,342 rupees |
| Northwest | 15 | 73 | 1,107,316 rupees |
| A free state | 14 | 151 | R5 266 317 |
| Eastern Cape | 7 | 93 | R635 239 |
| Northern Cape | 6 | 77 | R861,815 |
| Limpopo | 3 | 62 | R305 543 |
| Gauteng | 3 | 12 | R69 041 |
| In total | 478 | 84 | R57 263 188 |
2021/2022
| State departments | No. Suspended | average days | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| National | 380 | 64 | 31,426,800 rupees |
| KwaZulu Natal | 89 | 174 | 22,205,822 rupees |
| Eastern Cape | 29 | 105 | R3 720 597 |
| Western Cape | 24 | 68 | 1,730,997 rupees |
| Northwest | 20 | 123 | R6 632 282 |
| Mpumalanga | 15 | 77 | 1,934,787 rupees |
| A free state | 13 | 148 | R4 648 836 |
| Limpopo | 6 | 77 | R778 626 |
| Gauteng | 5 | 25 | R148 056 |
| Northern Cape | 3 | 99 | 730,650 rubles |
| In total | 584 | 87 | R73 957 457 |
Ghost workers
More egregious than the millions spent on suspended officials is the government’s problem with “ghost workers” in its departments.
“Ghost workers” are cases where departments, municipalities and state-owned enterprises have shelled out billions of rand to people who don’t actually work for them.
Problems with ghost workers are often discovered when these groups conduct physical headcounts and compare the numbers to payroll.
In 2021, the Msunduzi municipality in KwaZulu-Natal province identified around 120 ghost employees, and in 2020, the City of Tshwane said it had identified 1,400 ghost employees on its payroll.
In June 2022, the Mpumalanga Provincial Government announced a large-scale screening process for all 83,000 of its employees on Persal. Meanwhile, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula announced earlier in August that his department would investigate how 3,000 unverified employees ended up on the Prasa payroll.
Read: Government finds 3,000 ‘ghost workers’ being paid by Prasa
