According to DA councillor Wollaston Labuschagne, the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) Lungile Mtshali Legacy Initiative is funding the park. but the project management recently moved from the chief operating officer’s (COO) office to the customer relations management (CRM) Department.
“It is however, evident that neither of these departments had control over the contractors, as the company appointed to complete the park abandoned the site in October and has not returned since,” Labuschagne said.
The park remains incomplete and it would appear the contractor has vanished with the CoE’s money and to add insult to injury, the expanded public works programme (EPWP) workers and sub-contractors have not been paid for their services in full.
“I have sent numerous e-mail requests to the divisional head of the CRM department and the acting COO to intervene, but no intervention has taken place. The department’s silence leads me to believe that tender irregularities are, yet again, the order of the day as with previous Lungile Mtshali Projects,” Labuschagne explained.
He added that it is shameful that the executive mayor Mzwandile Masina, the city manager and the HODs have allowed unscrupulous contractors to waste ratepayers money and get away with it.
Still awaiting a formal response from the CRM department, Labuschagne said he has never heard of any municipal ward that has truly benefited from long-term or self-sustainable projects.
“This, after the ANC loftily decreed that the Lungile Mtshali banner would produce ‘legacies’ in every community. The Lungile Mtshali Project is just another example of poor service delivery by the ANC,” he concluded.
