By OBAKENG MAJE
The widespread corruption and maladministration continue to show its ugly head at the embattled Greater Taung Local Municipality (GTLM). This comes after startling revelations that directors, chief financial officer (CFO) and municipal manager, Katlego Gabanakgosi paid themselves a monthly danger allowance of R2500 during the COVID-19 pandemic even though they were working from home.
It is also alleged that these managers are doing this without any EXCO or council resolution and continue to get it even though the country has since gone back to its normality.
Now, the municipality has allegedly suspended the director of corporate services, Dikagiso Mokoma for misleading the municipal council. Mokoma ‘lied’ to the municipal council that, the decision to pay a monthly rate of R2500 to employees as a danger allowance was taken by the previous council.
However, she could not back up her allegations with any tangible evidence and that led to her suspension. In the process, the current council was forced to listen to the recordings to get to the root cause of the matter because Gabanakgosi could also not provide any EXCO or council resolution.
Now, the Forum 4 Service Delivery (F4SD) and other opposition parties like EFF and Democratic Alliance (DA) want these managers to pay back the money. The F4SD councillor, Mika Moeti said, the municipality would have spent R6 million on danger allowance if each employee gets a monthly R2500 as danger allowance.
Moeti further said, he understands that the previous council agreed upon R1500 as a flat rate, not R2500.
“So, as the F4SD, we have taken this with an exception because all these directors and managers who were paid R2500 as danger allowance, were actually working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have also conducted our own research on the matter and found out that, this was only agreed upon between directors, municipal manager and chief financial officer (CFO) without any EXCO or municipal council resolution,” he said.
Moeti added that they have now taken a resolution that, the directors, CFO and Gabanakgosi must pay back R1000s from the R2500s they received. He further said, there is a lack of service delivery within the communities and the municipality’s budget is only R363 million.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance (DA) councillor, Sam Nape said: “Clearly, there is malfeasance in this case. We are calling for a proper investigation and we will also call on the law enforcement agencies such as the Hawks and Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to probe the matter. There are also many issues in the municipality, where one could detect maladministration and corruption.
“To be honest, the management has not been fair because they insisted that they should be paid R2500 monthly because, at times, they are subjected to overtime.”
Nape said, even though the overtime period ended up around March 2022, these managers are still getting those R2500 monthly. He said they have not taken any decision on whether the money needs to be paid back or not pending investigations.
*Meanwhile, the municipal manager, Katlego Gabanakgosi and the municipality spokesperson, Ricky Oliphant failed to respond to our media enquiry, despite being sent to them three weeks ago.
The Guardian 