Allegations by employees that Habitat for Humanity may have mishandled a P13 million government contract to build houses in Kanye and Molepolole have raised speculation that all may not be well in the non-governmental organisation.
Unhappy workers claim that, as a result of the project going awry, Habitat for Humanity forced them to write their own letters of retrenchment because it could not pay them.
However, the NGO’s Director, Kabelo Seadimo, has played down the claims, saying they were merely idle speculation and untrue.
Employees told the Sunday Standard that the NGO received P13 million from government to build 640 houses in Kanye and Molepolole in a three year contract under the Destitute Social Services (DSS).
The contract was to run from 2009 to 2012, but had then been terminated because the houses were being built at a snail’s pace, with little hope of being completed by 2012, claimed one employee.
Another employee, a project officer for the NGO, said: “The DSS project had its own employees even though they ended being underpaid and then fired.”
The project officer said no Habitat for Humanity employee was involved in the project, “but I was amazed when we were called for a meeting in December by the Financial Manager on behalf of the Director and told the organisation was going through a financial crisis.”
It was allegedly on the basis of this financial crisis that the employees were asked to draft their own retrenchment letters, the employee claimed, because salaries were being used to clear the DSS debt.
“We asked the Finance Manager how the crisis affected us since we were not part of the DSS project, but he said it was either we stayed and earned nothing or left because there was a possibility of us not being paid in January and February this year,” she said.
The employees were reportedly to hand in the letters by 4th January.
The project officer said though they were paid half of their December salaries, with one employee being issued a cheque and cashing it for them to share, they had, despite this, continued working and waiting to see what would happen in the following months.
When reached for comment, Habitat for Humanity Director, Kabelo Seadimo, denied the allegations.
“These are just false allegations,” Seadimo said. “There is no way we can retrench our staff as we already have a small number, totaling 15.”
He added that with only one staff member per project overseeing the whole community project, retrenchment would mean failure to collect monthly payments from beneficiaries.
“We have many loans issued to several homeowners in different communities which we need to collect. So we can’t retrench. We get funding from our international office and also our mortgage collection, which is more than enough to sustain us. Actually our mortgage portfolio is in millions and we collect a lot from it on a monthly basis,” Seadimo said.
