The KwaZulu-Natal government, in partnership with the KwaZulu-Natal Financial Literacy Association (KZNFLA), the National Credit Regulator and the Justice College, have joined forces to assist heavily indebted government employees.
A two-day workshop, on Debt Counselling and Emolument Attachment Orders (commonly known as Garnishee orders), for Employee Wellness Practitioners and Human Resource employees started on Monday, 18 March 2013. The aim of the workshop is to capacitate them with the knowledge to assist employees who are faced with indebtedness.
The Employee Health and Wellness Practitioners render support and advice to employees who may be experiencing problems due to indebtedness. The workshop targets employees from the 15 provincial departments – the first of several, is a response to the high number of indebted government employees, as well as high incidents of fraudulent garnishees. Garnishee orders are court orders requiring the employer of a person in debt to pay part of their wages, with interest, directly to the lender.
The Employee Health and Wellness Practitioners and Human Resources employees will receive training in the Debt Counselling Process and Understanding Garnishees. This will help them to assist and support indebted colleagues better, as well as protecting them from immoral and unregistered debt collecting attorneys.
The garnishee workshop is one of several initiatives that followed the establishment of the Government Employee Focus Group of the KZN Financial Literacy Association. A garnishee task team, driven by the Office of the Premier and the KZNFLA, will implement strategies to deal with existing garnishees and debt counselling, abuse of garnishees and fraudulent garnishees, and ways of preventing indebtedness and garnishee orders.
By April 2011, one out of every seven public servants in KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial departments had a garnishee order against their salary, while in September 2012 financial advisory firm, Summit Financial Services estimated that 10-15% of the total workforce of South Africa had some type of garnishee order in place. The average number of garnishee orders per employee is about two, although in some cases can be as high as 12.
KwaZulu-Natal Premier, Dr Zweli Mkhize believes that most debt can be prevented by proper financial planning and advice. “It is essential that government helps our civil servants to get out of their debt traps.
Our citizens are looking at us to provide services. How are we going to give of our best to the millions of people out there if debt drains and kills us? This workshop is a great start to respond to a problem that takes the joy out of life for many people”
KZNFLA champion, Ina Cronjé, MEC for Finance, said “we want to get our employees out of the debt spiral. Those who are not in debt yet must be helped to stay out of debt and to avoid garnishee orders at all cost, and to assist those who are already in debts with the best way of dealing with garnishee orders”.
“Everyone in every income bracket is at risk of falling into a debt trap. However, it has to be addressed. People, who are heavily indebted, are not fully work fit and motivated to be productive. It can affect their health, resulting in stress, a negative state of mind and high absenteeism. If people are in debt, they get easily tempted to do be involved in corrupt practices and this makes our efforts to fight fraud and corruption difficult. Our mission through financial literacy is to ensure that people know how to use money wisely and that they don’t live a life of misery as a result of indebtedness” said MEC Cronjé
Mr Melulisi Maluleke, from the National Credit Regulator, said that “we are here to assist government employees to get out of debts, tackling issues of over indebtedness with the government employees, also to assist employees to get out of debt without having to get deeper into debt”.
Speaking on behalf of the Director-General, the Senior Manager, Mr Mzwandile Gumede, said that “The Director-General, Mr NVE Ngidi and all Heads of Departments are committed to ensuring that the employees within the province are adequately skilled to manage the challenge of indebtedness. Through the Employee Health and Wellness programme government employees are provided with workplace assistance to manage their personal finances and as well as the indirect problems associated with the financial indebtedness.
It has been noted that financial indebtedness has an impact on employees at all salary levels. Employees will be capacitated through behaviour change programmes to acknowledge their poor financial status. Through the analysis of the salary reports there are high percentage of employees who have multiple garnishees instated against their salaries. The first step in dealing with your finances is to acknowledge that your expenses are higher than your income.
Meanwhile a national task team headed by Credit Ombudsman Manie van Schalkwyk has been established to investigate current practices and establish a code of conduct to address concerns that Emolument Attachment Orders, loosely referred to as garnishee orders.
Van Schalkwyk says independent research by the University of Pretoria has so far highlighted a number of areas of weakness in the system including issues of misrepresentation by collecting attorneys, forgery of signatures, unreasonable instalments and high and unnecessary costs. These issues coupled with broader problems such as a lack of basic financial and legal literacy skills amongst consumers; insufficient communication between credit providers and employers; and a lack of knowledge amongst clerks of the court, as well as amongst employers are just some the reasons that the current practice is not sustainable.
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