More than 1,500 City of Johannesburg officials are facing possible criminal charges after it was found that they had fraudulently benefited from Covid-19 social relief grants.
This was revealed by Johannesburg executive mayor Geoff Makhubo on Tuesday after an internal investigation which has uncovered fraud and corruption by the city’s employees.
Money meant for the poor, elderly and unemployed went into the pockets of the city’s employees who are already receiving salaries.
This is one of the many corruption scandals involving the Covid-19 social relief grants that have been looted by government officials and their business associates.
Makhubo said 1,129 of the city’s employees fraudulently benefited from the R350 unemployment grant while 419 received other social grants that had been extended as part of government's relief measures.
“As a city we have committed ourselves to instilling the values of accountability and transparency across the city and at all levels. From the onset, we made a commitment to deal with fraud and corruption across the city and to ensure there are consequences for wrongdoing,” Makhubo said.
“We have directed labour relations in the city to initiate disciplinary proceedings against those affected and have advised GFIS [the Group Forensic and Investigation Service] to share the outcome of the investigations with the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) for further action which may include criminal prosecution.”
It was not immediately clear how much was actually paid to the implicated City of Johannesburg officials.
The grants were introduced by President Cyril Ramaphosa towards the end of March when the Covid-19 imposed national lockdown was put in place. They were designed to assist those who lost jobs and other forms of income to mitigate the economic impact of Covid-19.
Other forms of financial reliefs introduced by the government, including the Temporary Employment Relief Scheme (Ters), run by the UIF scheme, have also been pillaged across the country with a number of arrests already made.
“We are intolerant to malfeasance and criminal activity. We stand opposed to any form of corruption ... Our fight against corruption is real and in motion,” Makhubo said.
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