A call has been made to government employees who are not benefiting from the house purchase subsidy program to come to the Department of Public Works and Administration, as there is money that ends up not being used for this program.
There are 844,000 government employees who benefit from the housing program in this country, while there are others who are said to be beneficiaries when they receive this money every month.
Mrs. Pinky Kekana, the Deputy Minister of this department, said that there are 176 000 government employees who should be benefiting under the home buying program but are not benefiting because they are not coming to seek support.
“Government employees are subsidized with R1 973 per month to buy houses and this amount increases every year. There is R33 billion in the G fund.overnment Employees Housing Scheme, because there are workers who do not receive their entitlements. It is important that the workers come to seek this funding,” he said yesterday during the presentation of the budget for the financial year 2026/2027 in Parliament.
He said there are plans to visit the provinces to call on workers who are not benefiting to come and receive this benefit.
“We want to announce that the workers who were fired, resigned and retired are now coming to claim this money. There is R700 million left for those who left the government without receiving this housing benefit,” he said.
He also appealed to members of Parliament to help spread the gospel that workers who do not benefit, did not show up to receive this benefit.
The MEC of the department, Inkosi Mzamo Buthelezi, said that he sympathizes with government employees for the increase in expenses in the country. He said that is why he also recommends the initiative of the fund that provides health care for government employees, GEMS which has reduced the amount paid to employees.
“GEMS has finally agreed to reduce the amount paid to the workers by 2%, from 9.5% to 7.5%. This will help a lot as the workers have been complaining about the increase in the amount paid since the beginning of the year,” he said.
He said they are also investigating the lives of government employees, in the fight against corruption.
“We want people with administrative experience to be employed in senior positions. We are also strengthening the skills of employees because we want people to receive quality assistance from the government.”
He said that workers who were dismissed from other departments were also ordered to interfere with the government because there is no plan to look after those who were dismissed for different crimes, some of which are related to corruption.