Pretoria - Scores of victims who have been allegedly defrauded of millions of rand of their pension funds from the Great North Transport (GNT) Limpopo bus company are expected to march to the provincial legislature on Wednesday.
The victims are calling for speaker Rosemary Molapo to hold Limpopo premier Stan Mathabatha, Limpopo Department of Economic Development and Tourism MEC Thabo Mokone and provincial Treasury MEC Seaparo Sekoati to account for their pension funds going missing.
The Pretoria News previously reported that the victims were left counting their losses after R300 million of their pension funds vanished from their employer, GNT, which is a subsidiary of the economic development and tourism department.
GNT failed to pay their contributions to the administrators of the pension fund, or made short payments, for 17 years even though it had made monthly deductions from the employees’ salaries in breach of the Pension Fund Act (PFA).
The money was evidently used as cash flow by the cash-strapped bus company. Despite holding quarterly board meetings between 2000 and 2017, the GNT board of trustees also failed to report non-compliance by the bus company to the pension fund registrar as required by the PFA, according to a draft forensic report by global firm BDO.
The provincial Treasury appointed BDO to probe the matter in 2020 after Make It Happen Foundation (Mihafo), a social and economic justice NGO, complained on behalf of affected employees in 2016.
Representing the affected workers, whistleblower and the foundation’s director, Harry Masindi, said the workers were angry that Molapo was unable to enforce Act No 4 of 2003, and failed to call the provincial executive to account for the alleged liquidation of the GNT pension funds and the missing pension funds while failing to release the report.
“To date, the provincial treasury has not yet released the final report. Instead, Mihafo was shocked to see a newspaper advert announcing the liquidation of the GNT Provident Funds (12/8/26527) in line with section 28(7) of the Pension Funds Act (No 24 of 1956). As a consequence, more GNT workers will be taking to the street on Wednesday.
Masindi said the workers would be demanding:
* Immediate calling for the Speaker to account to the legislature for failing to protect the Constitution;
* Immediate calling for the MEC for Treasury, MEC for Economic Development and Tourism and the Limpopo premier to account to the Limpopo legislature;
* The immediate release of the BDO forensic report into the GNT Provident Fund;
* The implementation of the recommendations of the report;
* The immediate stoppage to the liquidation of the GNT Provident Fund;
* The arrest of those implicated in the misappropriation of workers’ monies;
* Bringing to book the nine administrators of the fund including Alexander Forbes, Lekana Employee Benefit Solutions and Monitoring Wealth Managers, Momentum Insurance, Sanlam and others for failing to report the non-payment of member contributions to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and the Pension Fund Adjudicator;
* And for the President (Cyril Ramaphosa) to issue an SIU proclamation on investigation of mismanagement of Great North Transport. They also want to see a stoppage of the mismanagement and privatisation of GNT.
Pretoria News