NEHAWU Northern Cape Opens A Case Of Fraud, Corruption And Extortion Against An Offical Of The Department Of Education
Thursday March 17, 2022
The National Education Health and Allied Workers Union [NEHAWU] in the Northern Cape has opened a case of fraud, corruption and extortion (case no De Aar CAS 77/07/2021) against an official of the Department of Basic Education.
This comes after workers approached the union demanding their monies or sufficient representation in their case currently at the CCMA, NEHAWU obo F White & 10 Others vs Smith Broers Paneelkloppers Quest Garage Filling.
Upon thorough investigation it became clear that a Mr Bitterbosch who is an employee of the Department of Education in the Pixley Ka Seme Region, took a decision to act and impersonate as a union official, sanctioned to represent these workers at the CCMA. Given his greed and kleptocractic nature, Bitterbosch extorted R35 000 from 11 workers in midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Central to the above is the inability of the Department of Education in the Pixley Ka Seme Region to monitor and provide supervisory role over their employees. While this may appear shocking, for us it is not, given the fact such individuals are often allowed to be on auto-pilot by the employer and thus go around misleading vulnerable workers.
As NEHAWU, we view the conduct of Mr. Bitterbosch as a criminal act and a gross misconduct as we are not even sure whether he has declared his business to the Department of Education as per the Public Service Act directive. We call upon the Department of Education to conduct an investigation on the conduct of Mr. Bitterbosch and institute disciplinary proceeding on this matter.
Equally, we call on the South African Police Service [SAPS] in De-Aar to speedily expedite the matter, seeing that the 11 workers not only lost their employment but were made to pay a huge amount of R35 000 to Mr Bitterbosch.
The union will not stand by and watch when the most vulnerable workers are robbed of their hard earned money as if there are not suffering high levels of exploitation led by monopoly-capital and further emboldened by the neo-liberal-austerity driven policy positions of our own ANC led Alliance government.
Lastly, we reiterate our call for the immediate suspension of Mr. Bitterbosch within 7 days. We will not allow reckless criminal acts to be perpetuated on our name.
END
Issued by NEHAWU Northern Cape Provincial Secretariat
Moleme Moleme (Northern Cape Provincial Secretary) at 0824552521 or email: moleme@nehawu.org.za
Banzi Sebotse (Northern Cape Provincial Deputy Secretary) at 0636851900 or email to Banzi@nehawu.org.za
Visit https://www.nehawu.org.za