Hot on the heels of a call for a probe into overtime worked by metro police officers, The Mercury can reveal that officers made merry in the December festive season, doubling and almost trebling their salaries by working hours beyond their normal shifts.
Documents seen by The Mercury indicate that some officers worked up to 18 hours a day on several successive days.
One document – titled “schedule of top 150 overtime earners for Jan 2012”, and which is thought to have been compiled by then-municipal manager Michael Sutcliffe – lists the names, ranks, salaries and overtime earned by officers in December.
The document, which has not been made public or shown to the full eThekwini council, bears the municipality’s emblem.
Questioned about the report, Sutcliffe, who is overseas, said: “I did a report for the mayor (James Nxumalo) and gave it to him. I would prefer that he addresses such questions as I am not sure what happened to that report.
“The report did not deal with overtime in detail, but addressed the issues raised by Samwu in their memorandum.”
Samwu, the SA Municipal Workers’ Union, has been at loggerheads with the city over issues ranging from nepotism to the municipality’s failure to give contract workers permanent jobs.
Other documents seen by The Mercury indicate that the UN climate change conference held in Durban in December was the main reason for overtime worked, but insiders said that providing 24-hour security to municipal officials and ANC councillors found to be at risk had also contributed to the high overtime claims.
One senior constable, who is allegedly on the guarding roster, supplemented his December salary of R15 783.72 with R28 289.28 in overtime pay.
The top metro police overtime earner was a sergeant who pocketed R40 386.39 for additional shifts worked in December.
His normal salary is R22 526.27.
The sergeant is believed to have had a gruelling December work schedule, working his normal 12-hour shift and then a further five hours on several occasions.
Second on the list is an inspector whose monthly salary is R27 628.54, but who took home an additional R40 228.38 for overtime worked.
Despite repeated attempts, The Mercury was unable to get comment from the municipality on the matter.
A damning forensic investigation into the municipality’s finances, carried out by auditors Manase and Associates and released last week, uncovered several irregularities in the metro police.
The report called for a full investigation “into overtime claims paid to officials with a view to recover the monies paid and to take action against those found to be guilty of misconduct and contravening the applicable policies and Municipal Finance Management Act”.
Asked about the overtime issue last week, metro police spokesman Eugene Msomi said: “We are aware of the Manase report and that… a full investigation is required into overtime claims by metro police officials. However, at this stage we do not have in-depth detail of the content of the Manase report and await (the) way forward in this regard.”
Samwu spokesman Nhlanhla Nyandeni said the union had consistently raised the question of the alleged misappropriation of overtime with the municipality. He said it was not “legally correct” to put in as many as 200 hours of overtime in one month, and questioned whether those hours had really been worked.
Complaints of hefty overtime bills are not new to the metro police. In 2009, then-metro police spokeswoman Joyce Khuzwayo told The Mercury that the 2008 overtime bill had been R73m, of which R13m was for overtime worked during the festive season alone.
She said the metro police were always “in trouble” for running up high overtime bills but, unlike other municipal department employees, metro officers were often called to work at unplanned events.
