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If you fake a sick day you could go to jail

According to Human Resources Online , one of the most recent cases involved a postal worker being sentenced to 26-month jail term for faking 635 sick days over four years.

According to civil service minister Paul Tang Kwok-wai, up to 5 151 civil servants have taken more than 30 days of sick leave in 2011, up from 4 460 in 2007.

In South Africa, the situation is no a lot better. Last year, Adcorp reported that between 2009 and 2011, a quarter of all workers took up all theirentire statutory allowance of sick days. As Census 2011 reported that there are approximately 60% of South Africa’s population is employed, when you do the maths, we aren’t far behind Hong Kong…

Author: Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company.