In a reply to a DA Parliamentary Question, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau has confirmed that the National Lotteries Commission will compensate whistleblowers who helped expose up to R2 billion of corrupt grants, after they were dismissed from work, suffered great torment and suffered financial losses in the whistleblowing process.
Minister Tau has confirmed that Ms Jodi Scholtz, Commissioner at the NLC, “has met with affected individuals and described their experiences as ‘heart-wrenching’, noting that their lives were ‘turned upside down’ due to their dismissals.”
Tau went on to state that “The NLC has not specified whether compensation for lost income during the period following dismissal will be provided. However, the reparation process aims to address the hardships faced by affected individuals, which could encompass financial compensation.”
The DA welcomes this approach within the DTIC and welcomes the compensating of whistleblowers who suffer serious losses as a result of their contribution to cleaning up corruption. But we believe that this must be a department-wide policy, applying to all entities in the dtic. It is not good enough that it only happens sporadically, and in this case only for the NLC.
As a prime example, this policy must extend to the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) which has been plagued by allegations of governance and management failures, brought to the DA’s attention by numerous whistleblowers since August 2024. As they suffer similar fates to their colleagues at the NLC, they too should have recourse to a department-wide policy of whistleblower compensation.
It is high-time that the evidence which the SABS whistleblowers continue to produce must be acted upon seriously.
I have written to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition, Mswandile Masina MP, requesting him to summon Minister Tau to account to the committee for his inaction in appointing an independent inquiry to investigate these allegations against SABS executives and board members.
Chairperson Masina has agreed to this request in principle but a date is yet to be set for the meeting.
It is imperative that clean and transparent governance becomes the norm in our state institutions. One way of achieving that is to give whistleblowers the confidence that the information they reveal, once confirmed for its veracity, will result in their fair and just treatment in the hands of their employers and law enforcement agencies.