Limpopo council out to fire municipal manager over multimillion-rand dodgy tenders

A Limpopo district municipality wants to fire its municipal manager for signing off lucrative tenders without following proper supply-chain management policies.

The Sekhukhune District Municipality has slapped its municipal manager, Nora Maseko, with a letter of intention to suspend her for allegedly awarding sanitation projects worth R213 million without going through the normal bidding process.

Limpopo has 22 local and five district municipalities. None of the province’s municipalities received a clean audit during the last financial year, ending June 2019.

The Sekhukhune district was among a few councils in the province that got unqualified audit reports. The municipality had hoped to get a clean audit from Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu but that became a mirage after Makwetu identified wasteful expenditure of R213 million and R66.7 million in irregular expenditure.

Now the special council sitting at Makhuduthamaga Local Municipality in Jane-Furse has decided to give Maseko the boot.

The municipality confirmed Maseko was given a letter of intention to suspend and accused her of being responsible for the dismal performance of the municipality in the AG’s report.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), the official opposition in the municipality, is today lodging a formal complaint with the office of the public protector to probe allegations of contravening the supply chain management policies during the awarding of the tenders.

DA councillor Isaac Makofane said the wasteful and irregular expenditure was accrued from the procurement of six diesel generators and the construction of VIP toilets.

According to invoices submitted by the council to DA, one generator was sold at R437,000.

“To our knowledge, 20 companies were appointed without going through the bidding processes. The companies were appointed to build the toilets in rural communities in the district’s four towns,” Makofane said.

“The DA is deeply concerned that Sekhukhune, which is 80% rural, could be turned into a corruption hub for self-enrichment,” Makofane said.

Maseko said she was not able to speak to the media about the matter.

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