DA calls for lifestyle audit on Limpopo MEC

The Democratic Alliance has called for Limpopo cooperative governance MEC Jerry Ndou as well as others to undergo a lifestyle audit due to alleged financial mismanagement and corruption.

According to the party, R34 million has been “dumped” into a water-supply project that shows no signs of ever being completed.

The DA claims the latest payment “was specifically designed to benefit certain connected individuals” without providing any benefits to Hoedspruit and Mopani residents.

According to the party, “a few years ago, the project which intends to install bulk water pipelines, bulk water supply and a purification plant in the same area that is worth over R135 million was abandoned”.

“The expensive pipeline, which is part of the project, starts at Hoedspruit High School and ends on a piece of land bought by the municipality with the intention to build a purification plant,” the DA’s statement continued.

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The DA said the contractor had bulldozed private land without permission to build a reservoir that they have now had to relocate to land owned by the department of public works.

“The DA can confirm that there are already two reservoirs in Hoedspruit and neither the contractor, consulting engineer nor MDM can explain why a third reservoir is needed and where the new reservoir will be built.”

The party claims that roughly R10 million was wasted during the project due to improper management.

They have called on a lifestyle audit for “all stakeholders involved in the project, especially the executive mayor, the mayoral committee member responsible for infrastructure, the municipal manager and director”.

They said failure to do this would amount to proof that “connected people want to use this project as a scapegoat to loot the taxpayers’ money to benefit themselves”.

The office of Ndou was approached for comment, but had not gotten back to The Citizen by the time this article was published.

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