The office of the curator managing the affairs of VBS Bank says the final number of people who were given retrenchment notices on Friday is exactly 100, while 25 employees will remain at the bank.
Initial information the SABC received from the workers’ union, SASBO indicated that 101 workers would be retrenched and 26 would remain.
VBS Bank was placed under administration by the Reserve Bank in March.
Spokesperson for the curator’s office, Louise Brugman says some of the information was sourced from unofficial documents.
“After having concluded talks with the employees, the curator can confirm that final employment contracts have been signed with 25 employees and the retrenchment packages have been issued to 100 staff members. The implication of the retrenchment is that retrenched staff members will receive a retrenchment package comprised of notice pay, severance pay and accumulative leave.”
Noria Raliphaswa, a cleaner who worked for the VBS Mutual Bank in Thohoyandou for 15 years, says she is angry that the bank only paid her a R21 000 severance package.
Raliphaswa is one of the employees who received notices of retrenchment from the bank on Friday.
She spoke with the SABC at her home in Manini village and says the workers are being punished for other people’s sins.
She says: “I am a breadwinner at home and have credits including a loan from VBS. I worked here for 15 years and I was given peanuts after working for all these years. The severance package is way too little, I don’t know how I’m going to survive and feed my family.”
Meanwhile in the wake of the VBS Mutual Bank scandal, Chairperson of the PKF business consultancy firm, Theo Vermaak, says there’s evidence of governance issues in firms across the country.
Vermaak says there’s a lack of consequence management for unethical leadership behaviour.
He says: “I think it would be hard to argue that there isn’t a governance crisis in South Africa. There clearly are fundamental issues that we need to address and I firmly believe that a lot of that stems from leadership and examples set by the leaders.”
“I do think that South Africa is hailed for corporate governance codes but I do think that one of the issues that we have is the lack of consequences of poor behaviour. The laws, ethics codes etc, serves a good purpose up to a certain point but after that we do need consequences for unethical behaviour,” says Vermaak.
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