Officials tricked MEC into inflating their salaries, says department

Nine officials in the Limpopo Department of Agriculture are being probed for allegedly unduly inflating their salaries. Department spokesman Kenny Mathivha confirmed yesterday that the department had uncovered wrongdoing last month.

The officials, whose names are known to The Star, are employed at various levels within the department. They include a top bureaucrat, a general manager, senior managers and middle-level managers. Sources in the department pointed out that a manager in the office of Agriculture MEC Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba had had her salary almost doubled, from R420 000 to R800 000 a year. Another senior official’s salary went up from R700 000, to about a R1 million a year, while a top bureaucrat’s new salary had allegedly been increased to such an extent that it was more than the report R1.3 million salary that head of department Edward Nesamvuni receives. Mathivha said the officials had tricked Letsatsi-Duba into approving the alleged increase.

The department’s spokesman said the MEC had agreed only because she had expected this to be a once-off performance bonus and not to move people’s salary notches. Letsatsi- Duba had ordered the implicated officials to repay the money, said Mathivha. By yesterday only three officials had repaid the money. Mathivha said the department had given the rest of the officials until Friday to pay it back. The matter was also being probed by the premier’s office. We have been able to pick up that anomaly through our internal monitoring systems,’’ said Limpopo government spokesman Tebatso Mabitsela. He added that the alleged unlawful salary adjustments had been reversed from the paying system.