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Given the complaints we have been receiving pertaining to the state of affairs of the CETA, the committee has invited CETA to a meeting schedule to take place on 18 June 2025 to deal with the Duja Forensic report and other allegations of governance lapses at the CETA. - Portfolio Committee on Higher Education secretary, Anele Kabingesi.

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Sizwe sama Yende

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The leadership of the Construction Education & Training Authority (CETA) will have a chance to answer to parliament a plethora of corruption, nepotism, maladministration and victimisation of union members.

The National Health Education and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) has been putting pressure on the board to act on the allegations, which were mostly directed at the CETA’s chief executive officer, Malusi Shezi.

The People’s Eye has seen Nehawu’s 36-page submission to the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education detailing all the allegations.

Committee secretary, Anele Kabingesi, confirmed that the committee had received “a number of correspondences” from individual CETA employees and Nehawu, and had afforded the union an opportunity to engage with the committee.

Nehawu’s submission responds to the portfolio committee’s request to Nehawu to provide more information on their allegations. “Given the complaints we have been receiving pertaining to the state of affairs of the CETA, the committee has invited CETA to a meeting schedule to take place on 18 June 2025 to deal with the Duja Forensic report and other allegations of governance lapses at the CETA,” Kabingesi said.

“There were many forensic investigations undertaken at the CETA by different companies and the committee was given the reports. Thus, our role is not undertake further investigations, rather to exercise oversight over the CETA as part of our constitutional mandate. We would also like to assure you that the CETA had submitted responses to the Committee based on the submission made by NEHAWU,” he added.

Some of the allegations in the Nehawu submission include:

·      A wave of suspensions of Nehawu members and shopstewards;

·      Changing of policies without employees being informed, and their charging on violating such policies they had no knowledge of;

·      Workers’ fear to report their grievances about an executive’s alleged interference in supply chain matters because management allegedly retaliated by suspending and charging them;

·      Suspension and charging of an official for accusing the CEO of interfering in supply chain management issues;

·      A CFO resigning because Shezi was allegedly charging a junior official in supply chain who questioned the presence of a principal agent at a specifications committee meeting without prior notice;

·      Suspension of an official for hanging up a call from a rude service provider who called her when she was on leave;

In July last year, The People’s Eye reported on Nehawu’s allegations that Shezi personally issued a request for quotation (RFQ) on January 4 2022 for companies to bid for a senior management recruitment support and board members details verification tender.

Shezi allegedly did this without the involvement of any supply chain official even when one of the offered to do the job and warned him about incurring irregular expenditure.

Shezi’s alleged procurement contraventions are that he issued the request when the offices were closed; did not source quotations from the central data base according to National Treasury directives and internal supply chain management regulations; and copied a service provided in the e-mail he sent requesting the quotations.

At that time, CETA board chairperson, Thabo Masombuko, said: “These inquiries often contain allegations aimed at assassinating the character of our CEO and discrediting the work of the Ceta Board.” 

Shezi was also alleged to have signed an adjudication report on a tender awarded to Five Star Communications on December 9 2021 for the supply of promotional materials before all bid adjudication committee members had done so. 

The company was not tax compliant when Shezi allegedly signed the report. Five Star had to be given seven days to fix their tax status.

The Five Star Communications tender was capped at R35 million for a period of 36 months. He also allegedly sent an appointment letter himself to the service provider.

These allegations are also part of Nehawu’s submission to Portfolio Committee on Higher Education.

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