The municipal bakkie that cost Mmoloki Ikaneng his job

06 December 2016 - 15:12 By TMG Digital
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
Image: KACPER PEMPEL / REUTERS

Mmoloki Ikaneng made a bad decision when he signed out a municipal vehicle for a working day-trip‚ kept it instead for three days and ended up writing it off.

As part of his job at the John Taolo Gaetsewe District Municipality he was hired to visit parts of the Northern Cape.

He signed a Toyota bakkie out of the municipal car pool on a Thursday in 2014 to visit a farm near Van Zylrus where he was supervising a fencing project‚ using an authorisation form that made it clear that he needed permission to keep it overnight.

Ikaneng returned to Kuruman but kept the vehicle at home until three days had passed. While discreetly attempting to return it to the municipality on Saturday night he left the road and wrote it off.

Instead of reporting the accident he went home‚ was hauled before a disciplinary hearing and dismissed for the unauthorised use of a vehicle and failing to report an accident.

He challenged the dismissal and won. Now‚ more than two years later‚ in a protracted and expensive legal battle‚ the municipality has finally won its struggle to have him dismissed after his dismissal was found to have been procedurally and substantively fair by the Labour Court in Cape Town.

 - TMG Digital

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now