Sowetan reports that a second top labour department official faces contempt of court charges for taking too long to pay hundreds of millions of rands to a company that processes “injury on duty” claims.
Compensation Solutions (CompSol) has revealed that it will institute contempt of court charges against labour director-general Thobile Lamati and the Compensation Commission.
The department’s chief operations officer (COO) Shadrack Mkhonto, who was previously the commissioner at the Compensation Commission, is fighting similar charges after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) sentenced him to a three month jail term, suspended for five years, for ignoring court orders to pay CompSol over R400-million for processing the commission’s claims.
In April, the SCA found Mkhonto in contempt of a July 2009 North Gauteng High Court judgment ordering the commission to pay CompSol.
The high court also ordered Mkhonto and the commission to process the backlog of medical accounts within three months.
Mkhonto has approached the Constitutional Court to have the SCA’s finding set aside, arguing that it is a “serious matter which impedes my dignity and directly affects my freedom. I now have a civil contempt of court finding hanging over my head for a period of five years, in circumstances where I did not wilfully breach an order of court,” reads Mkhonto’s founding affidavit.
He said the contempt of court finding was an invasion of his rights and that he was entitled to exhaust all legal remedies to vindicate his version.
Mkhonto’s term as compensation commissioner ended in May last year and he was appointed the department’s COO the following month.
CompSol chief executive Charl van Wyk, revealed in his opposing affidavit, that the company issued no less than 19 summonses against Mkhonto, the commission and the director-general encompassing accounts worth over R422-million. He said all the summonses were based on ongoing breaches of the same order, forming the subject matter of the case. “The respondent (CompSol) is in fact currently preparing a fourth application to have the second (Compensation Commission) and third (Lamati) applicants held in contempt of this same order,” said Van Wyk.
Lamati was not the director-general at the time the order was granted, but the occupational health and safety chief inspector.
According to Van Wyk, there had been constant breaches of almost all aspects of the high court order.
The Constitutional Court will hear Mkhonto’s appeal in March.
The original of this report by Loyiso Sidimba is on page 2 of Sowetan of 29 November 2016
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