The Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality building. Bloemfontein, Free State. Photo: OFM News
Administrators from national government that were sent to fix the problems plaguing the Mangaung Metro claim to have terminated ghost workers’ contracts, stopped fraudulent overtime payments, and initiated a head count of employees at the troubled municipality.
Acting municipal manager Tebogo Motlashuping arrived to take over at Mangaung earlier this year, after it was placed under administration by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
The intervention team included officials from national treasury tasked with helping turn around the ailing municipality’s finances after years of mismanagement and corruption.
On Wednesday, Motlashuping detailed to members of Parliament’s Cooperative Governance Portfolio Committee how corruption and lack of governance engulfed the metro for years.
“Mangaung had a bloated staff, lack of oversight and proper governance systems, political instability, factionalism in council, high vacancy rates at senior management level, low staff morale, and poor work ethic.
“There’s also prolonged disciplinary matters, high litigation costs, poor documentation leading to poor audit outcomes and poor planning for transitional measures.”
Furthermore, the metro hadn’t paid several of its service providers since 2016.
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The Citizen has previously reported on how political appointees drew millions in salaries from the municipality while they sat at home.
The ghost political appointees were drawn mainly from the regional African National Congress (ANC) membership after the 2021 municipal polls, and included Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula‘s brother, Jabu Mbalula.
The 100 cadres drew R2.5 million in salaries in January alone.
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According to Motlashuping, Mangaung is drawing up a new organogram and no longer has ghost workers on the payroll.
“The organisational structure was not fit for purpose, and we have refined it. We expect the process to be completed by October.
“We have since terminated their contracts in May, and also made sure political offices are staffed by skilled temporary staff until organisational structuring is done. Political parties have accepted our decisions to terminate these contracts, there are no ghost workers here at the moment.”
Work is underway to reduce municipal departments from nine to seven.
Motlashuping said there has been a backlash and sabotage by workers when management tried to curb overtime payments. He confirmed to MPs that he was physically attacked by angry workers over payments for overtime, as reported by The Citizen in June.
“We have problems regarding overtime money every time at the end of the month. We took a decision that we were not going to budge in eliminating overtime payments that were embedded in the municipality. Employees subsidised their salaries through overtime, it became a norm.
“There was ballooning of employee costs because of this, and we were even attacked physically for taking such a stand. We are starting to engage employees to make them understand why we are here, and win their support in trying to better the image of Mangaung,” he said.
Workers revolted and started to close water valves at night, leaving the metro without water, he said.
“When we told them to open up the valves, they did so but because they closed the valves at night, they claimed overtime payments. That’s the kind of sabotage we’re dealing with when we try to correct the wrongs going on here. We send the police to accompany them to open valves, only for them to return and close them again, leaving the city without water.”
READ MORE: Troubled Mangaung pays law firm R1m to translate documents, ignoring own legal staff
A law firm has since been appointed to investigate and eliminate irregular expenditure incurred through the metro’s workforce.
While the administrators worked on head counts and matching jobs and workers to eliminate salary disparities, majority union SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) requested that workers be paid R40 000 each in the meantime, Motlashuping said.
“Disparity in salaries was because of the mismatch of employees. We are in a dispute with Samwu which wanted us to give workers R40 000 each while we deal with this. We told them that is not sustainable and cannot be done.”
Mangaung’s R2 billion rapid bus system named Hauweng has been marred by corruption and fraud allegations since it was launched in 2016. The first phase of the project failed to take off.
Five years and R103 million later, only 10 busses were purchased through alleged corrupt procurement processes. According to OFM, a middleman scored R20 million in the procurement of the busses.
In June, Mbalula announced that a forensic investigation had been initiated, promising that “heads will roll” in the metro.
The probe, said Motlashuping, was hampered by officials who refused to cooperate with forensic investigators KPMG.
“We gave them written warnings to comply with the investigation. There was serious corruption and fraud in that unit. We have appointed, on an urgent basis, a construction company to work along the Moshoeshoe Road to get on with the rapid bus service urgently.
“There are 88 people working day and night on site, there’s also 20 local sub-contractors appointed by the main contractor to assist.
“The first phase of the Hauweng bus service will be launched in October by Minister Mbalula. This project was launched in 2016 but it never started, we have fast-tracked it and set 1 October for the minister’s launch.”
Meanwhile, MPs condemned the “destructive behaviour” of politicians at municipalities.
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP Anthony Matumba said politicians had become arrogant.
“Chairperson, we always raise the issue of no political accountability at the municipalities. All accountability is on management only. In all issues we deal with, it’s either we get them through by whistleblowers, SAPS, SIU or the Auditor-General.
“No MPAC or oversight committee picks up these issues, they are all picked up by structures outside municipalities, even at Mangaung. If there’s no political will, these administrators will work throughout while politicians mess up everything,” he said.
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