The DA in Polokwane welcomes the three new reports by Bowman Gilfillan as presented to Council in a closed special council sitting on Tuesday, 22 October 2024.
The three reports emanate from concerns raised by the Auditor General (AG) and concerns raised from an Internal Audit.
Due to the incriminating nature of the reports, councillors were once again only allowed limited access ; we will formally request additional access to peruse the full reports and all evidence compiled through the detailed investigation.
The three reports highlighted the following:
- The verification of employees follows a 2019/20 AG finding that no physical verification was done since 2017. The investigation found that the previous manager of the legal department used the identity document of another person, produced a fake matric certificate and a fraudulent LLB-degree. This rogue advised the Speaker and Council for over a decade.
Furter findings included 8 full-time employees who were simultaneously on the EPWP payroll, some employees were found to be on extended sick leave and one employee received a salary without doing any work for 5 years.
As there is no proper system linked to the payroll system of the municipality, employees were able to take more leave than their official allocation.
The DA will investigate all matters handled by him that could have put Polokwane municipality at risk.
We also eagerly await the case number from the Municipal Manager as the only remedy is a criminal case and civil claim to recoup all salaries paid to the former manager, including withholding of his pension fund.
- Overtime abuse of full-time and EPWP workers
The lack of a adequately monitored electronic system, resulted in payment of R128 million in overtime over a 14-month period. 307 employees worked more than 60 hours of overtime in a month, in clear violation of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.
The investigation also raised more questions into allegations of contractor abuse. The seemingly common practice is for contractors to use municipal materials and then bill those materials on top of their labour charges back to the municipality.
This is indicative of mismanagement and entrenched corrupt practices deeply rooted within the municipality.
If the ANC-led administration really wants to address this overtime problem a simple shift system must be implemented; something the DA in Polokwane has been actively advocating for years, cutting overtime and creating more jobs at the same time.
- Construction of the Mankweng Sports Complex
The project was initiated in 2014, is still not complete and marred with problems spanning over a decade. Damned from the start as bid specification was done only after advertising the bid, the initial budget was R69 859 101,86 and an unrealistic estimate of R126 million to complete.
Construction started without approved building plans and many safety concerns were raised by the investigation.
Bowmans recommended a further investigation into the appointment of Ditlou Engineering Consultants and that steps be taken against the project managers.
Investigators were not given all documents requested, clearly indicating massive scale corruption.
It is disturbing that council was made aware that some portions of land utilised for the construction of the complex are not the property of the Municipality, this after the Planning Department informed the then Municipal Manager about the situation as early as May 2017.
To this date, we await a follow-up report to return to council regarding the previous Bowmans report submitted to council in April 2023 showing updates and action taken against officials. A forensic investigation is only as good as the action taken from it.
The DA will continue to monitor the progress on these investigations and see that the full recommendations in the Bowmans report be implemented as we believe the findings highlight systematic, institutional wide degeneration of improper corporate governance.