Inquiry into fitness test resumes

An inquiry into a recruitment fitness test that led to the deaths of eight people in Pietermaritzburg is due to continue on Tuesday. 

 

On Monday, testimony about a woman collapsing during the finess test was questioned. It emerged that the witness had made an affidavit in which she denied seeing anyone collapse. Nonhlanhla Mlambo was testifying at the commission, headed by Thandani Norman SC, appointed by KwaZulu-Natal premier Zweli Mkhize earlier this year.  Eight people died after taking part in a four-kilometre run at the Harry Gwala Stadium in Pietermaritzburg in December, in a fitness test which formed part of recruitments by the Road Traffic Inspectorate. 

 

More than 34,000 people qualified to apply for the 90 advertised trainee posts. A total of 15,600 applicants attended a fitness test on December 27 and a similar number on December 28. An unknown number of them collapsed due to the heat. Many were taken to hospital.  Asked to read an affidavit Mlambo submitted to the commission in Pietermaritzburg in April, she said: "I did not see any of the participants collapse."  Mlambo said earlier that when she heard people shouting "She's falling, she's falling", she stood up on her seat in the stands and saw the woman collapsing on the grass. 

 

Mlambo denied an assertion that she was embellishing the truth. Mlambo said the denial in her affidavit related to December 28, when she took part in the fitness test herself.  She told the commission she had also gone to the stadium with a friend the day before to see how the fitness test was being held. That was when she had witnessed the woman collapsing.

 

-Sapa