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1 year ago
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Former labour department director-general Thobile Lamati refutes allegations of wrongdoing amid the controversial Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) fund diversion.
Former department of labour and employment director-general Thobile Lamati has played the victim in the exposé of a controversial scheme to channel billions from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) into a private investment company.
Lamati resigned from his post via WhatsApp on Wednesday in the wake of the scandal about the scheme, involving a R5 billion transaction – part loan and part grant funding – with Thuja Capital, owned by businessperson Mthunzi Mdwaba.
In a farewell message to staff, which City Press has seen, Lamati – who worked for the department for 25 years – said his resignation had been triggered by the scandal, but was not an admission of guilt.
READ: Labour DG quits: 'Dominoes start falling' in wake of R5bn UIF scandal
Instead, he suggested that his stepping down was to protect the department – which he said had become home to him – from reputational damage. He added that his own safety had been compromised after his office had been broken into.
His office, like that of the minister, was strongly fortified, with biometric access control, yet had been breached.
According to Lamati, the bad publicity emanating from the scandal had done more harm to the department than it had to him.
He wrote:
Management lives and dies by the decisions it makes. It’s the responsibility of an individual in a decision-making position to make [those decisions] based on the information at their disposal.
In terms of the scheme, which has since been scuppered, Mdwaba would buy stakes in various companies and then use his power as a shareholder to promote job creation.
Thuja Capital was hastily registered less than a year ago, shortly before Lamati and UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping pushed for the deal to happen.
READ: Department of employment and labour DG in R5billion scandal
The former DG confirmed having approved the project, saying it offered greater prospects of employment to millions of jobless people.
He wrote:
The project, unlike all the projects we had before, had the potential to create more than 700 000 sustainable jobs.
In government, according to Lamati, people feared making mistakes because of the consequences. Those like him, who did not fear making mistakes, would always be the victims of the system.
“The system will, as the saying goes, ‘spit you out’. On realising that, no matter what the outcome of this Thuja saga is, things will never be the same again. That sense of community which we worked so hard to entrench has been destroyed over the past few months and staying [in the department] won’t bring it back,” he wrote.
READ: Former productivity chair Mdwaba defends UIF deal
However, what he failed to address in his message was the fact that his job had already been on the line, as President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was the only one with the power to fire him, had been mulling over a report from Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi on the matter.
Instead, Lamati ranted that he had been a victim of unscrupulous journalists out to get him, claiming that some of them had been hired to do so. He added that the journalistic practice of affording someone the right of reply was simply a smokescreen.
