DA wants ANC to be probed for alleged failure to pay staff UIF contributions

The DA wants the ANC to be investigated for its alleged failure to pay staff contributions to the Unemployment Insurance Fund  (UIF) despite deducting them from salaries.

The governing party finds itself embroiled in a financial crisis that has seen it fail to pay staff salaries and other benefits for months. Now ANC employees are on strike in protest.

The Sunday Times has also reported that the ANC has not paid Pay As You Earn (PAYE) deductions to the SA Revenue Service (Sars) either, and that it owes the tax authority more than R80m which led to its bank account being garnished.

The newspaper reported that the party had also failed to pay provident and pension funds to the administrators despite making deductions from the employees' salaries.

DA MP responsible for employment and labour Michael Cardo said on Friday that he had  written to labour minister Thulas Nxesi to confirm whether the ANC had been paying over UIF contributions to the state.

“This follows a claim by disgruntled staffers at Luthuli House that since 2018 the ANC has been deducting UIF contributions from workers but not paying them over to the government,” Cardo said.

Cardo said they would review Nxesi’s response and approach law enforcement authorities should it not be adequate.

“In the absence of a satisfactory answer from the minister or the UIF commissioner, the DA will lay a charge for the Hawks to investigate further. If no UIF payments have been made, the ANC would be in breach of the law and the top six would need to be charged.”

The financial ruin the ANC found itself in revealed the depths of its incompetence and dysfunctionality, Cardo said.

The party has not paid its workers for two consecutive months as it struggles to raise money from funders.

“If the ANC can’t administer its own payroll properly, then it is hardly fit to govern, or to provide stewardship over a modern industrial economy,” Cardo said.

The DA would also approach Sars and the police to ensure the ANC was held accountable.

“For the fact of the matter is that if the DA does not intervene, people will have to forgo their rightful benefits. The ANC is incapable of doing the right thing. That is why even ANC staffers look to the DA to get things done,” he said.

Meanwhile, ANC staff have hit out at party spokesperson Pule Mabe for suggesting that their strike was aimed at undermining President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The employees on Friday said they were “appalled” at suggestions that their actions were politically motivated.

“Any suggestions that raising our grievances is a political ploy to undermine our president comrade Cyril Ramaphosa is a fallacy and a diversion from the conditions of squalor which staff members are being subjected to by a movement which historically projected itself as a voice of the working class and the poor,” staff said in a joint statement.

“It must also be clarified that fundraising is not a function of the presidency in the ANC. We frown upon [these] laughable hypocritical insinuations. The national spokesperson is also a staff member at our head office and we are fighting for his rights as well. It therefore becomes important that he communicates the ANC message around the industrial action, with the highest form of sensitivity to the plight of the rest of staff members.”

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