About 100 VBS Mutual Bank employees countrywide face possible retrenchment next month. The bank has branches in Thohoyandou, Sibasa, Louis Trichardt in Limpopo, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
The spokesperson of the office of the curator, Louise Brugman, has confirmed that only 26 employees will remain. The employees will get severance packages, three weeks’ salary and R5 000 for the repayment of their loans with the bank.
Brugman explains: “Yes I can confirm that there has been requirement to reduce staff at VBS Bank. This was announced to staff on the 13th of July already and the consultation process started on the 24th of August which included the unions and the non-unionised members. The CCMA was also involved and then this involved about 100 staff members and for the bank requirement of staff now is reduced to 26, so the impact of possible retrenchment is around a hundred people.”
Meanwhile, Brian Shivambu, the younger brother of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, says it is not fair for the Reserve Bank report to implicate him in looting VBS Mutual Bank without interviewing him.
He plans to sue the Reserve Bank for defamation of character. Shivambu has denied any involvement in the looting of VBS.
He says his company Sgameka Projects was appointed to provide professional consulting services to Vele Investments in their mining and insurance businesses. Shivambu claims that his company does not have any working relationship with VBS and did not receive any payment from it. He however admits that during the contracting period, Vele Investments advised him to use VBS for easy payments.
Brian Shivambu says if Advocate Terry Motau had bothered to contact him, he would have demonstrated that he had no dealings with VBS. He says he’s willing to cooperate with Law Enforcement institutions in South Africa to put this matter to rest. And he further says he intends to legally pursue the owners of the VBS Report for defamation of character.
Additional reporting Abongile Dumako
Please note: This story contains inaccuracies in respect of the details around proposed retrenchment packages – which details were not provided by the Office of the Curator.
SABC Digital News has published an updated story with corrected details.
Click here to read: 100 VBS employees retrenched.
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