It’s tickets for City’s Melissa Whitehead
Controversial transport commissioner suspended on Friday
CITY transport and urban development commissioner Melissa Whitehead has been axed after several accusations of corruption involving millions of rands.
Whitehead’s conduct was pointed out in a forensic investigation report, leading to the City Council announcing on Friday she has been suspended.
Charges against her included nepotism, after she employed close friends in senior positions; irregularly benefiting from a Chinese electrical bus tender; and favouring a particular bid in the City’s delayed Foreshore project.
Mayor Patricia de Lille has been accused of covering up alleged corruption involving Whitehead. De Lille has denied this, but a further investigation by the City is yet to be completed.
It is alleged that Whitehead was involved in unfairly advantaging a Chinese company, BYD, to secure a R249 million tender to manufacture 11 electric buses.
The allegations come after reports that Whitehead threatened and coerced members of the City’s bid evaluation committee for the Foreshore freeway precinct to award the tender to a particularly entity.
Whitehead denied the allegations and claimed that the City’s employment and tender processes had been followed.
Xolani Sotashe, ANC leader in the city council, referred to the matter during a debate in councilon the water crisis.
“Really, we need to act now. We need to act the same way we have acted on the suspension of Melissa Whitehead,” he said.
The City has not formally made an announcement after meeting for the second time behind closed doors.
The ANC previously revealed that Whitehead’s friends were a married couple. She had allegedly gone on an overseas holiday with them in 2015 and images of Whitehead and the couple abroad were found on Facebook. The ANC alleged that Whitehead sat on the interview panel when the wife applied for a top management position with a salary of R1.8 million a year.
The husband, who earns just over R1m a year, was interviewed by a panel who worked under his wife.
Whitehead has denied all the ANC’s claims. She has also had to explain the firing of 22 cashiers for theft of up to R43m from MyCiti bus stations in Cape Town.
The Point of Sale equipment, which had been unplugged to cause the “zero transactions” enabling the commitment of the fraud, has been secured so that it cannot be tampered with. Increased security has been placed at stations where the most theft had occurred, Whitehead said in an affidavit.
Weaknesses of financial controls in the MyCiTi fare system were pointed out by auditors PwC in a December 2014 report.
In a report arguing why she should not be suspended, pending an investigation into allegations of misconduct, Whitehead said she learnt of the thefts only in 2016.
She said the latest intervention is systems-based, in that the Station Management Contractor and Absa Bank must reconcile cash received before such cash is sent to the City. She said the losses were about R36m and not R43m as reported.
City manager Achmat Ebrahim, who also had to give representations as to why he should not be fired, resigned last Friday.
According to Brett Herron, Mayco member for transport and urban development, a replacement for Whitehead will be announced today.