Former CFO blocks KZN health dept from appointing new CFO
17:20 / 11 FEB 2016
DURBAN, February 11 (ANA) – The KwaZulu-Natal provincial health department’s bid to fill the long-vacant post of chief financial officer (CFO) has been blocked by a high court order.
The department’s former chief financial officer Mashaka Ravhura, who has been fighting to keep his job, obtained an interim order in the Durban High Court, preventing KwaZulu-Natal’s health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo from making any permanent appointments.
The interim order, handed down by Acting Judge Andrea Gabriel last Friday follows an urgent application brought by Ravhura after his position was advertised in a Sunday newspaper.
Ravhura claims he was initially suspended by former head of the health department, Dr Sibongile Zungu, in 2014 after Dhlomo allegedly criticised him for not awarding a tender.
Zungu then dismissed Ravhura in January 2015, despite the disciplinary inquiry recommending that he be served with a final written warning.
Less than a month later, Ndoda Biyela, the Gauteng Health department’s former chief financial executive, was appointed to the post.
However, he too was sent packing in April 2015 after it emerged that he had been suspended from the Gauteng health department amid irregularities related to a tender for linen. Dhlomo at the time distanced himself from the appointment, saying that he had never been consulted.
Biyela challenged his dismissal in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, while Ravhura has sought to challenge his sacking in the Labour Court, claiming that Zungu did not have the legal powers to overturn the decision of the disciplinary inquiry only to issue him with a written warning.
It was not immediately known what has come of Biyela’s challenge to his dismissal.
Ravhura had sought in his application lodged with the court last week to prevent the department from advertising for the position of chief financial officer or appointing anyone to that position until the Labour Court had ruled on whether he was legally dismissed.
Judge Gabriel ordered that Ravhura and Dhlomo return to court on March 4 for the application to be heard and until then Dhlomo has been ordered not to make any permanent appointment to the CFO position.
African News Agency
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