The Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) has been scammed by 3 000 “ghost workers” in its system, who were receiving full salaries.
Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula said that even though Prasa stopped payments in December, this “grand scam”, which was discovered during the Operation Ziveze campaign, shows “how broken Prasa is”.
Operation Ziveze was implemented to uncover irregularities at the state-owned entity, and no one has stepped forward about not receiving a salary.
“It is a system of corruption within the human resources management, meaning somebody has orchestrated a scam to steal money from the organisation,” he said.
Mbalula, who appeared before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) on Tuesday said: “In a normal company you can’t afford to have one ghost worker. We have 3,000 and since December a stoppage was done on paying those people.”
There’s forensic work being done to uncover who was paid, including checking bank accounts to find out where the payments were made to.
Mbalula also mentioned that it will cost Prasa around R4 billion to repair and rehabilitate the vandalised infrastructure.
“The cost to PRASA to repair and rehabilitate the vandalised infrastructure is at the tune of R4 994 674 062.88. Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal have suffered the most devastating vandalism of rail infrastructure,” he said.
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Picture: Cape {town} Etc Gallery