By OBAKENG MAJE
The dire situation at the embattled Greater Taung Local Municipality (GTLM) has drawn the attention of the ANC provincial leadership. This comes after ‘summoned’ the municipality’s Troika to its Mpekwa House offices in Mahikeng today.
Recently, the municipality has been under siege after being marred with widespread allegations of corruption, maladministration and malfeasance. It is alleged that the senior managers at the municipality, paid themselves R2500 monthly for danger allowance during the COVID-19 pandemic even though they were working from home.
It is alleged that these happened without any EXCO or council resolution. Another issue, the municipality has 47 unverified employees including 17 councillors.
Now, the Forum 4 Service Delivery (F4SD) and other opposition parties, 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 is paid a monthly R2500 as danger allowance.
Moeti said, he understands that the previous council agreed upon R1500 as a flat rate, but not R2500.
“As the new council, we had to solicit the report from the administration to understand what exactly happened. We understand that, there was a disagreement between the administration and the labour forum in terms of the flat rate of R1500.
“So, as the F4SD, we have taken this with an exception because all these directors and managers who were paid R2500 as danger allowance, they were actually working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
Moeti further said, they conducted their own research and found out that, the matter was indeed agreed upon directors, municipal manager, chief financial officer (CFO) and senior managers without any EXCO or municipal council resolution.
“The municipal manager as the accounting officer, could not give us any tangible evidence or resolution on the matter. We understand that every issue that goes to EXCO or council passes through him. Now, we have taken a resolution that all managers, directors, CFO and municipal manager must pay those R1000s from R2500 they received for danger allowance.
“There is a lack of service delivery to our communities and the municipality’s budget is R363 million,” said Moeti.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) councillor, Sam Nape said, there are widespread allegations of serious corruption, maladministration and corruption at the municipality that need to be probed. Nape said this can be attributed to various factors, including incompetence, unwillingness including lack of accountability.
“Clearly, there is malfeasance in this case and is equivalent to corruption. As the DA, we call 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 many issues 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 because, at times, they are subjected to overtime,” he said.
Nape said, even though that time period ended around March 2022, these managers are still paying themselves that money. He said, they have not yet taken a decision on whether the money will be paid or not pending investigation.
The EFF provincial secretary, Papiki Babuile said the widespread corruption that is existing at the municipality is because the ANC recruit and appoints leaders, who are corrupt in their nature.
Meanwhile, ANC provincial spokesperson, Tumelo Maruping said: “It is true that the ANC leadership has called a meeting with Troika of the municipality. The fact is, the Deployment Committee, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the ANC, has been meeting with all Troikas of all municipalities across the province.
“This series of meetings started on 20 September 2022, so the GTLM Troika and other municipalities are scheduled for today as part of that program. The agenda of the meeting is mainly around performance assessments on local government barometer in line with the 2021 Local Government Manifesto and service delivery in general.”
The Guardian 