Recruitment and placements company Kelly Group has hit back at a weekend newspaper report that suggested it cooked its black economic empowerment (BEE) credentials.
This week’s Sunday Independent quotes a report by Borena Consulting that alleges that Kelly Group tweaked its employment equity numbers to inflate its empowerment status.
The newspaper says suspended Kelly Group deputy CEO Mthunzi Mdwaba commissioned the report from Borena Consulting.
Mdwaba, who is believed to have fallen out sharply with Kelly Group CEO Grenville Wilson, has been charged with not disclosing a debt he owes related to a failed business he was involved in before joining Kelly Group.
According to the Sunday Independent, the Borena report found that the group was listing black workers as “preferential procurement” partners, leading to the idea that the company was buying from more black companies than others, and so inflating its BEE rating.
However, Kelly Group has slammed the allegations and commissioned empowerment ratings agency Empowerdex to underwrite its BEE credentials.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Wilson says the group “adheres to the highest standards of governance and rejects as scurrilous any suggestion that it would seek to mislead its stakeholders by window-dressing its empowerment credentials”.
In the same statement, Empowerdex MD Lerato Ratsoma says the ratings agency is “completely satisfied” that the information provided by Kelly Group in order to conduct its assessment was a “full and true disclosure of its empowerment status”.
Rastoma says Empowerdex will not comment on the assessment conducted by Borena as it does not have access to the methodology the ratings agency used.
However, Rastoma says the Borena report may contain inaccuracies.
“Because Borena Consulting is not accredited by the SA National Accreditation System (Sanas) verification agency, we caution that any BEE assessment conducted by Borena may not have been conducted in line with the Sanas-approved verification manual.” — Staff reporter, TechCentral
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