Fikile Mbalula hints at army deployment on Cape Town’s Central Line and goes after Prasa ‘ghost’ workers

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula says a preliminary investigation by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) has found that 1,480 employees could either not be physically verified or their files were nonexistent. 

Mbalula and senior Prasa officials briefed the media on Monday on the issue of “ghost” workers at the agency.

In March this year, Mbalula told Parliament it seemed that there were 3,000 ghost workers at Prasa.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Prasa on the hook at Scopa over 3,000 ‘ghost’ employees and many other disasters”

On Monday, Mbalula said Prasa had conducted its own investigations under the banner of “Project Ziveze”, which aimed to ensure all employees who drew salaries from Prasa were legitimate.

This comprised four stages of employee verification at the agency which has been hammered by neglect and vandalism. During one phase of the investigation, only 14,268 out of 17,268 employees on the agency’s payroll system presented themselves for verification, said Mbalula. 

“Failure by 3,000 employees to come forward for physical verification led to suspicions that there could be a number of ghost employees at Prasa,” said Mbalula.

The Prasa board then did a clean-up exercise to determine if these were, in fact, “ghost” workers. An independent service provider was commissioned to look into the issue and identify agency officials who may have been involved in a scam.

Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations

The investigation flagged 2,143 employees who had been grouped into employees who could not be physically verified, employees masquerading as somebody else, fraudulent qualifications submitted and employees with serious criminal offences.

“The preliminary investigation revealed that 1,480 employees cannot be physically verified and their files or documentation are nonexistent, while others resigned without the necessary supporting documentation at the start of the project,” said Mbalula.

The minister said the project’s scope extended to “validating whether the employment of foreign nationals is in line with the provisions of the law… the initial exercise revealed that several Prasa employees were without valid ID documents and the necessary work permits as required by laws of the Republic”.

According to Mbalula, other agencies that assisted Prasa in the verification process included the South African Revenue Service, Umalusi and the South African Qualifications Authority.

A forensic investigation will be triggered due to the preliminary probe, said Mbalula.

Asked to clarify Mbalula’s comments that the investigation had saved Prasa R200-million, the agency’s acting CEO, Hishaam Emeran, said that over the course of the 10-month probe, an average of R20-million a month had been saved.

However, Emeran said this was a “conservative amount” as this figure had been calculated only for Prasa Rail, and not the entire agency.

Calls for another inquiry into Prasa

Gangsters on Cape Town’s Central Line

Filling senior roles