WINDHOEK- The Roads Contractor Company (RCC) acting Chief Executive Officer Pieter Oosthuizen is in the soup over the entire workforce’s salaries being erroneously processed.
It is alleged salary deductions were caused by a system error in the new payroll system ‘Build Smart Payroll,’ which was implemented early this year but only came into effect in March. A South African company HMS Africa is administering the system.
It is believed Build Smart Payroll miscalculated figures thus leading to some workers having as much as N$1 000 to N$3 000, depending on the salary scale, being deducted from their salaries. The fortunate escaped the axe and the fault turned in their favour with them raking in more money.
The least paid workers took home only N$24 after deductions, according to allegations.Kennedy Kamati, one of the affected employees, told New Era N$2 700 was deducted from his salary. “It did not stop there – after the deduction they wrongly increased my tax and doubled my medical aid. Whereas I only had medical aid A and B now I have C as well, which they deducted,” said Kamati who has worked for the RCC for 18 years.
“The worst part was demoting me from a permanent level to a temporary employee, without a reason and I have worked here for 18 years,” he added.
Initially the RCC CEO had promised that workers would be paid all their dues for March.
But when the deadline was not met 40 to 50 workers acting on behalf of the entire workforce demanded answers from the acting CEO.
In a notice circulated to staff the RCC board chairperson Sonia Bergh states: “We are working on this matter non-stop and as it stands we expect to have all under-payments completed by Tuesday 14th, 2015. The General Manager: Human Capital Management committed that by 15h00 today, they would upload all payments and release it to the banks. It will take the banks approximately two (2) working days to process the payments thus we expect the last payments to be done by latest Tuesday 14th April 2015.”
She further assured workers the general manager for human capital management would obtain all relevant, up-to-date information from the respective banking institutions to ensure RCC pays and settles the banking charges.
Bergh said corrected pay-slips would be printed and distributed to workers and she assured that the RCC would write a letter to banks stating the oversight was the responsibility of RCC so that its workers’ creditworthiness is not affected by the oversight on the side of the RCC.
“I would like to apologize for what has transpired with your salaries which resulted in the unhappiness. It is fitting that we take responsibility as management and resolve this matter as soon as possible,” she stated.