Metro urged to limit use of external lawyers

INSTEAD of wasting hefty amounts on private lawyers to represent the metro in internal disciplinary cases against its employees, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality should beef up its legal services department to do the job. Samwu regional secretary Mqondisi Nodongwe yesterday said the union wanted the metro to stop using private legal firms to handle disciplinary matters. The union said senior managers, the city’s legal services and labour relations department should hear cases and institute disciplinary procedures themselves. The department has previously come under fire from councillors who say it is to blame for the metro losing hundreds of thousands of rands through court cases because of incompetent legal advisers. Before appointing Teboho Motasi as its head in March last year, the department had been without a director since 2011. Nodongwe said they had raised the issue with acting city manager Johann Mettler last Thursday and that Mettler had committed that under his watch the excessive use of private lawyers would stop. “We have senior managers like executive directors who we believe are empowered to handle internal disciplinary hearings instead of wasting money on lawyers,” he said. “The legal services department people are supposed to have the capacity to deal with these matters because they are also qualified lawyers, but they keep on outsourcing.

“We need people who are legally sound in that department, especially on matters of labour law. They must beef it up . . . if need be.” However, Mettler said disciplinary processes, grievances and conciliation processes were handled by the labour relations sub-directorate, as that was its core function. “Cases concerning executive directors and other top officials are the exception as separate regulations govern them,” he said. “However . . . our labour relations unit uses lawyers from a panel approved by the legal services unit and only makes use of external legal practitioners where the outcome could have far-reaching financial implications for the municipality and/or where the other party has employed legal practitioners.” The union raised the issue as several managers and workers were facing disciplinary hearings. Nodongwe said they believed that some of the cases were not legally complicated. “It is a complete waste of money for a municipality that always says it does not have money to hire external lawyers,” he said. However, Mettler said: “A number of cases involving senior and middle-ranking officials are in the hands of attorneys for reasons [including] a lack of more senior, experienced internal officials to fulfil the roles . . . intimidation of internal officials, and the complexity or gravity of the allegations.”