The North West government says a technical glitch - and not the unavailability of funds or human error - is to blame for the delay in the processing of payments for over 7 000 Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) employees.
The North West Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport says payments were not made because of the unavailability of the Personnel and Salary System (Persal) due to a crash in the Provincial Information Technology system.
Acting spokesperson of the North West government, Moses Lesiba Kgwele, said the crash was reportedly caused by constant power failure in Mmabatho and did not only affect the EPWP employees, but also affected other public servants employed by the provincial government.
He said the provincial government sympathised with the EPWP employees who did not receive their stipends on Tuesday and appealed for calm as the matter was being investigated at the highest level.
Acting MEC for the department Raymond Elisha has assured Premier Thandi Modise that the first batch of payments would be deposited tomorrow and the last batch would be deposited on Monday, 6 February.
"As per agreement reached between the employees and the acting head of the department, Andrew Kyereh in December, every effort is being made to pay half of the claims that are three to four times above the expected task while balances are to be settled as soon as audits are completed," he said.
