11th June 2020
Own Correspondent
The Botswana Government has staunchly defended its decision to take donations from troubled retailer Choppies saying in times of trouble you are not ‘fussy’ about where you get the money from.
This stance is at odds with its often repeated public mantra about its commitment to fighting financial irregularities and money laundering.
Choppies is marred in controversy and was suspended from the Botswana Stock Exchange(BSE) and Johannesburg Stock Exchange(JSE) in 2019 after it failed to publish its audited financials.
This caused a public standoff leading to Former President Festus Mogae, being ousted from the board after demanding a forensic audit of the company’s dubious dealings. The company’s chief executive officer and co-founder Ramachandran Ottapathu allegedly runs the troubled company as a one man show and leverages off his personal relationships with key political leaders.
“In times like these you take whatever money you can,” said Kabelo Ebineng, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Employment, Labour Productivity and Skills Development.
The Department of Labour and Social Security has also revealed that since the declaration of the state of public emergency the department of labour has received a total of 1911 enquiries through the call centre with complaints from hospitality, services, retail trade and security services industries.
A total of 1676 cases were resolved during lockdown which translates to 87.7% while 235(12.3%) were referred to relevant authorities involving issues of travel permits, food rations and wage subsidy.
Another 370 trade disputes were also registered through various labour offices with 34 of them being dismissal cases involving 64 employees and 12 being cases of retrenchments involving 130 employees. These cases are pending mediation which will be conducted during the month of July 2020.
“There is a significant number of enquiries on this matter. The department is receiving reports that some employers have received the wage subsidy and did not use it for the intended purpose ie. to pay employees. Furthermore, it is reported that employers have abdicated their obligation to pay employees in terms of their contracts of employment by paying the employees the subsidy money only,” said Kabelo Ebineng, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Employment, Labour Productivity and Skills Development.
He said, “It should be noted that the wage subsidy was intended to protect both the employer and employee from the effects of COVID-19. It was never meant to replace an employee’s salary.”
According to officials companies closed during the extreme social distancing periods can benefit from wage subsidy if registered for tax and encouraged them to honour their terms of employment. It has also been indicated that those private companies which are classified as essential services will be expected to pay employees for hours worked.
In terms of section 145 of the Employers Act any employer who fails to pay wages shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding P1,500.00 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to both. Similar penalties are also faced by those defiant employers who fail to pay their employees severance benefits despite the stipulation in section 27 of Employment Act to do so.
Any party to a trade dispute can refer a dispute to any district labour office for mediation within 30 days of termination of contract and within a reasonable period from the date of non-payment of the entitlement. Once the trade dispute is registered a mediator is assigned within 30 days.
The process is however very long and cumbersome with labour cases taking up to a year to reach the industrial court if parties are unable to reach an agreement.
According to officials the wage subsidy was introduced by Government under the support to employee strategic objective of the COVID-19 economic response plan for a period of 3 months being April, May and June 2020 under the auspices of Botswana Unified Revenue Service(BURS). BURS received submissions from 15, 918 companies requesting P269,483,760 for 190,705 employees.
The COVID Management Committee approved all requests except for private schools. The reason for non approval of wage subsidy for private schools for April 2020 is that most parents had already paid school fees for April 2020. During May BURS received submissions from 13,193 companies, requesting P212,969,063 as wage subsidy for 149,087 employees.
During assessment of applications for the month of May 2020, the Assessment Team noted anomalies with regards to some of the submissions from companies , hence payments amounting to P4,927,890.92 to those companies were withheld. Total wage subsidy disbursed to BURS is P482,452,823.00.
Grace Muzila, Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, said “We do appreciate that some employees may be employed by more than 1 employer eg. Quantity surveyor working for two companies.”
She said, “ But the COVID-19 guidelines are very clear on how to handle this situation. Where an employee has more than one employer, the employee is obliged to inform their employers that they are employed by another employer and indicate to each employer where they wish to access their subsidy.”
This anomaly has resulted in delayed payments for some of the companies. This was an issue in April 2020. For May 2020, BUTRS rectified the anomaly. We have started contacting the concerned individuals requesting them to return the funds.
A vast majority of companies were claiming wage subsidy and paying employees less than the P1000.00 and/or not paying employing at all. More than 2000 public officers claimed wage subsidy in April 2020 and some companies applied for wage subsidy using the names of family members.
