Council paypoint staff loot tills – DA

MERAFONG City local municipality staff at paypoints have “elected to use money meant for service delivery to fund their personal affairs, turning the municipality into a loan shark”, the DA said yesterday.

A report on the virtually collapsed municipality painted a shocking picture, DA Gauteng MPL and Merafong constituency head, Ina Cilliers, said.

“The report indicates that staff at various paypoints across the cashstrapped municipality are sticking their hands in the till for various dubious reasons.

“Staff at the pay points have elected to use money meant for service delivery to fund their personal affairs, turning the municipality into a loan shark. For example, at the Fochville pay point, a cashier admitted to taking R1 220 to go to Bloemfontein, claiming it was an ‘advance on his salary’,” she said.

The report stated that the reasons for the lack of control were staff shortages, poor supervision, and a shortage of vehicles which had not been allocated to the area since 2014.

As a result, the municipality had now temporarily closed certain paypoints, making it even harder for the municipality to collect much needed revenue, Cilliers said.

Staff implicated in the till looting had been suspended but no disciplinary action had been instituted, nor had any arrests been made, as was the practice in the City of Johannesburg where corruption was not tolerated, she said.

The DA would continue to mount pressure on the ANC to ensure that corruption was rooted out and those found stealing faced the full might of the law.

“I will again raise this matter in the House (Gauteng legislature) because the longer it persists the more the people of Merafong suffer. The people of Merafong deserve a government that shows zero tolerance to corruption,” Cilliers said.