NEWSROOM CROSSING
WATCH: Uncovering an ‘untested’ R5bn UIF deal
Business Day TV speaks to Sabelo Sikiti, an investigative journalist at the Sunday Times
In a late-night scramble last December, senior officials from the labour department and the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) finalised a R5bn deal that would have seen UIF funds channelled into an untested job-creation initiative.
The scandal was uncovered in a Sunday Times report last December, in which the department’s director-general Thobile Lamati and UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping conceded the deal was an “untested concept” and that it had been rejected by the Public Investment Corp (PIC), which invests UIF funds.
The department has since pulled the plug on the deal and axed Productivity SA chair Mthunzi Mdwaba, whose company, Thuja Holdings, was registered just 10 days before the deal was signed and would have been a major beneficiary.
For more on the story, Business Day TV spoke to Sunday Times investigative journalist Sabelo Sikiti.