Jali: Impassioned plea lands job

2003-02-25 21:05

Cape Town - An impassioned plea by a senior correctional services official in the Western Cape resulted in a job in the department for a relative, the Jali Commission has learned.

The commission is probing jobs-for-pals claims against former acting provincial commissioner Mnikelwa Nxele.

Nxele is alleged to have irregularly instructed that four names be added to a list of 100 successful candidates in a recruitment drive in the province at the end of 2001.

His legal team this week handed in a letter to him from the chairman of the Drakenstein prison parole board, Nozipiwo Dumbelwa, asking that her niece, Bulelwa Ntunja, be interviewed.

Dumbelwa said Ntunja had twice been rejected because she fell short of the department's effective requirement that recruits be at least 23 years old.

She said Ntunja, from Willowvale in the Transkei, was one of a family of 10 children, that the parents were unemployed, and that a grandmother on whose pension they depended had recently died.

Dumbela said she herself was a single parent with two daughters and had adopted a third child.

"I am also responsible to support Bulelwa's family, as her mother is my sister," she said.

'Overloaded'

"With all the above mentioned facts, I am overloaded. I humbly request you to give this girl a chance to prove herself during the interview process, and she might become a suitable candidate.

"This would alleviate the burden I'm having which also have [sic] a negative impact on my children."

An annotation on the letter, presumably in Nxele's handwriting, instructs a subordinate to liaise with the recruitment section on whether Ntunja could be interviewed during the current recruitment drive.

The commission has already heard from the acting head of recruitment at the time, Samuel Theron, that the 100 posts authorised by the department's head office in Pretoria had already been filled.

Theron has testified that Ntunja's name was one of four that Nxele nonetheless instructed him to add to the list.

Ntunja is currently employed by the department.

Nxele is now the department's Western Cape head of corporate services, which puts him in charge of all personnel matters.

The commission has heard that approximately 30 000 people applied for only 100 jobs in the 2001/2002 Western Cape recruitment drive.

- SAPA