OR Tambo business community demands municipal lifestyle audits

The OR Tambo district’s business community wants mayor Thokozile Sokanyile to institute lifestyle audits on all municipal officials.

They are also demanding that at least 70% of projects be ringfenced and allocated to local contractors.

The call arose after a report tabled in council on June 17 detailed how the district municipality had paid out more than R168m to companies — some of which allegedly had not done any work.

On Tuesday, a group of business forums and SMMEs from the five local municipalities making up the district camped outside the OR Tambo district municipal offices in Southernwood, Mthatha, where they handed over a memorandum to council speaker Xolile Nkompela.

In the memo, they also call for under-fire municipal manager Owen Hlazo to be fired and for a forensic investigation into the district municipality’s finances for the period 2015-2019 to be launched.

“We demand a lifestyle audit of all municipal officials ranging from section 56 managers, supply chain management officials, contract managers and officials serving in the bid adjudication committees,” the group’s spokesperson, Ndumiso Ngcebetsha, told Nkompela.

“We note with concern and dismay the sidelining of some representative structures of the municipality.

“The municipality is practising the discredited policy of divide and rule.”

Ngcebetsha said they had seen a copy of the auditorgeneral’s report from the 2016/2017 financial year which showed that the municipality had incurred a balance of R2.3bn in unauthorised expenditure, which had been written off without it being investigated by council.

The group called for bigger projects to be unbundled to accommodate local contractors as few of them had Grade 7 and 9 grading.

In their memorandum, seen by the Dispatch, they lashed out at the district municipality for shunning local companies when it came to the provision of ICT infrastructure, arguing that work was given to companies either from outside the district or from other provinces.

They argued they possessed the same skills and capacity to do the job.

They are also unhappy with the dilapidated state of infrastructure in the district.

Ngcebetsha told Nkompela the district municipality had 48 hours to respond to their demands.

“If they fail we will shut down this district municipality and make it ungovernable.”

Nkompela told the group that many of the issues they had raised were already being attended to, including the forensic investigation into OR Tambo’s finances.

This will include lifestyle audits on officials and management.

“Whether you are the speaker, manager or mayor, everyone must be investigated as corruption is crippling the district municipality,” he said.

He said criminal cases had been opened against those implicated in corruption and financial mismanagement.

Both national treasury and provincial Cogta had been approached to intervene.

“We are taking this seriously,” Nkompela said.

We demand a lifestyle audit of all municipal officials ranging from section 56 managers, supply chain management officials, managers