Mangaung spokesperson, Qondile Khedama, says he has forwarded OFM News’ media query to the relevant officials for information, upon which he will respond to the allegations. 

The anonymous group from Mangaung Metro’s 2019 traffic learnership cohort, turned metro police trainees, say they are in a state of limbo with no idea what their future will look like. This after the municipality abruptly stopped paying this class their R2500 monthly stipends and informed them that their contracts with the metro had come to an end. The group alleges that they are being denied access to the UI-19 forms which would enable them to claim from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF).

The other allegations include contractual discrepancies between themselves and the 2018 cohort. Whilst both the 2018 and 2019 classes were moved to the law enforcement skills programme (LESP), meant for metro police officials, they were not earning the same amount in terms of stipends. The 2018 class’ stipend was increased to R6500, whilst the 2019 class continued to receive R2500 upon this bridge from one discipline to the other. They allege that when they asked why they were earning less in September 2021, they were told “Mangaung doesn’t have a budget”. The 2018 class also has a longer contract.

The termination of the aforementioned trainees’ employment happened on the back of the National Treasury ordering that the Mangaung Metro Police be abandoned – a decision which was reversed in late December 2021 by the Bloemfontein High Court. 

The anonymous group is of the view that they and their fellow 97 classmates are just the victims of a political battle in the metro, because the metro police department has, in fact, been greenlit, legally speaking. “A lot of us are depressed, even in our conversations with another. We had a very cold December not getting paid. There are people who needed to pay rent, there are people with families who needed to ensure that their children had Christmas clothes and that their parents had food on the table. But we didn’t have that, because Mangaung kept us in the cold,” says the trainee.

OFM News