A South African government official who granted himself a 350% pay rise has been sacked.
Collins Letsoalo was supposed to be “Mr Fix-it” – brought in to clean up corruption and waste at South Africa’s troubled railways authority.
But soon after his arrival last year at Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, Mr Letsoalo allegedly sought a pay rise of 350% – taking his annual salary to some $450,000 (£360,000).
When a newspaper published details of what it said was an unauthorised salary increase, Mr Letsoala insisted he had done nothing wrong.
But the rail agency board has now decided otherwise – and voted unanimously to remove him from the job.
To some, this is a scandal about the culture of entitlement and corruption pervading the upper levels of the South African state.
And a rare example of someone actually being found out, and punished.
But Mr Letsoalo is right to point out that executives running the country’s other struggling state-owned enterprises all earn similarly huge salaries.
With South Africa’s economy stalled, anger over inequality growing, and the government borrowing heavily to pay its army of civil servants – there may be other lessons to learn from Mr Letsoalo’s fall.
Source: BBC Africa
