Since appointing a new board of control (BOC) on October 27, 2020, State-owned entity Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) said a widescale audit of the company’s employees had revealed 3 000 “ghost employees” drawing pay cheques but whose existence could not be verified.

In a media briefing held at PRASA’s headquarters in Johannesburg on February 1, PRASA BOC member Smanga Sethene explained that the employee audit had revealed that PRASA had 17 000 employees on its books. However, following a lengthy and thorough verification process, only 14 000 of these employees could be verified as real people.

The 3 000 “ghost employees” have since not been paid and none of them have come forward to claim their paycheques.

The payments to these mystery employees is part of R28-billion in irregular expenditure reported to the National Treasury.

Sethene said the PRASA BOC was working with the Hawks to determine who these fraudulent employees are and who might have been claiming their salaries.

PRASA BOC chairperson Leonard Ramatlakane said he expected criminal cases to be opened when the culprits had been identified.

Moreover, more than 50 employees were identified as foreign nationals who had been living in South Africa fraudulently. These employees’ identities could not be verified with the Department of Home Affairs.

Ramatlakane said PRASA was making headway in terms of clearing corruption and holding those responsible accountable.

He added that some employees at PRASA had “inexplicable wealth”. Therefore, the board had called for a transparent lifestyle audit of all these individuals, the results of which would be made available to the public in due course.

The primary aim of the new BOC was to bring stability to the embattled agency, he said.

The new board was embarking on a complete restructuring of PRASA’s structure, starting with the appointment of a permanent CEO.

“The structure of the organisation is top heavy and unwieldy. It is therefore unable to move quickly. This has required a complete reassessment of the PRASA business model to improve agility,” Ramatlakane said

The new business model draft has been submitted and is currently under review.

Ramatlakane believed that, when appointed, the new CEO would bring stability to the organisation.

Moreover, several other executive positions were yet to be filled, which the BOC was actively addressing.

To date, PRASA had a 19% vacancy rate, which the chair blamed on a dearth of necessary skills.