Of the three KwaDukzua Municipality (KDM) officials reportedly involved in a R1,8 million printer fraud last year, only one has so far had any action taken against him.
KDM chief finance officer Shamir Rajcoomar has received a disciplinary letter for his alleged involvement in the fraud and is countering by haul – ing the municipality to court, accusing municipal manager Nhlanhla Mdakane of racism and fraud.
It was discovered last September that two contracts costing KDM R1.8 million were both signed off for the same printing service while the municipal manager was on leave.
The irregular contract was apparently slipped into a pile of papers sent for signing which saw printing costs escalate from R30 000 to R300 000 for six months.
Should the transaction have continued as it was planned for the three-year term, it would have defrauded the municipality of about R10 million. The new printers have since been replaced with old ones that do not work, leaving most municipal departments without printers for nearly eight months.
The investigation reported to the KDM executive committee last year that three senior officials – the acting municipal manager, an official from corporate services and CFO Rajcoomar, had been implicated in the irregular contracts.
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However, only Rajcoomar has been issued with a disciplinary letter to date. He is the only Indian official amongst the three and now, according to an anonymous source in the municipality, he is accusing municipal manager Mdakane of not following proper procedure when carrying out the investigation and for targeting him because of his race.
His allegations and intentions to take the matter to court were contained in a six-page letter addressed to KDM mayor Ricardo Mthembu two weeks ago.
The source told the Courier that the results of the investigation were supposed to be revealed last year but this had not happened.
“Of the three officials who were found to have been involved, one from the corporate service department was responsible for dealing with issues relating to printing services and the contracts itself, the other was standing in for the municipal manager and had signed off on those contracts, and the third was the CFO who was implicated because he did not put a procedure in place to prevent such things from happening and for not picking up the transaction fast enough.”
KDM has denied the accusation of racism and has declined to comment on the investigation, claiming it to be “sub judice.”
“Should any of the parties feel there is an injustice, they know the remedies that are available within the legal system. If there are any suspicions of racism and any other kind of misconduct, the relevant institutions must be approached for investigation and prosecution,” said KDM media liaison Sipho Mkhize.
Rajcoomar declined to comment.
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