Matshepo More, PIC return to CCMA after unfair dismissal ruling
Former Public Investment Corporation chief financial officer Matshepo More is returning to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), where her erstwhile employer is challenging a CCMA ruling in her favour.
Image: Screenshot
Former Public Investment Corporation (PIC) chief financial officer Matshepo More is heading back to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), which previously ordered her reinstatement and awarded her over R6.7 million in compensation.
In September 2022, CCMA commissioners Cameron Morajane and Nthabiseng Thokoane declared her dismissal substantively and procedurally unfair, and she was reinstated.
The PIC was ordered to pay the costs, and in a supplementary award, the commissioners quantified her backpay and costs due at more than R6.74m and R39 000, respectively.
More was fired by the PIC in October 2021 after being found guilty of misconduct.
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She was charged after approving R350m revolving credit facility to the now defunct VBS Mutual Bank in 2014, which was outside her delegation of authority.
The PIC accused More of recommending the then chief executive, Dr Dan Matjila, to enter into the revolving credit facility agreement in breach of her duty to ensure that the terms of the agreement complied with the fund investment panels' approval before providing the confirmation and recommending that it be signed.
More then referred her unfair dismissal dispute to the CCMA, where she argued that the alleged misconduct constituted a breach of contract.
The CCMA found that the claim (charging and dismissal) that the PIC has against More is extinct through the running of uninterrupted prescription.
The commissioners deemed the charges and subsequent dismissal incompetent.
In addition, the commissioners stated that as the instruction was in contravention of the delegation of authority, More's dismissal was therefore premised on an unlawful and unreasonable instruction and the charges and the subsequent dismissal were unfair.
'More has succeeded in her claim for prescription. The outcome is that the dismissal is substantively and procedurally unfair. The instruction issued by Dr Matjila as found above was unreasonable and unlawful,' the CCMA ruled.
The PIC then approached the Labour Court in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, arguing that the commissioners committed a material error of law.
Last month, Labour Court Judge Connie Prinsloo reviewed and set aside the CCMA's arbitration award and the supplementary award.
'The matter is remitted to the CCMA for arbitration de novo by a senior commissioner or commissioners, as the case may be, other than the third and fourth respondents (Morajane and Thokoane),' reads Judge Prinsloo's judgment, adding that the record of proceedings generated the supplementary case shall serve as the evidence before the appointed commissioner or commissioners.
The arbitration de novo (afresh) is to be conducted on such terms and in such manner as the appointed commissioner or commissioners may determine, and the CCMA was directed to enrol the matter for arbitration.
Attempts to contact More were unsuccessful at the time of publication.
loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za
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