VANDERBIJLPARK. – Panicked by their own lack of proper planning for a terminated smart meter contract, ELM’s managers wasted more than R3 million on a cover-up irregular contract to keep the system going, then cancelled that abruptly, sparking the huge meter replacement crisis.
The R3 million irregular cover-up or “transitional arrangement” has again placed ELM’s two managers, former Municipal Manager Dithaba Oupa Nkoane and Chief Financial Officer Andile Dyakala, at the centre of another wasteful expenditure and gross dereliction of duty scandal. It has
also shown how ELM top management issues irregular contracts and agreements to address its own mismanagement, then refuses to pay service providers fully or at all, leading to chaos in service delivery and major economic hardship in the Vaal.
This emerged from an ongoing MooiVaal Media investigation into the smart meter fiasco which has already cost ELM an estimated R40 million in lost revenue and damages. Nkoane has been blamed publicly by the Provincial Government for the disaster, but Dyakala has thus far escaped scrutiny as CFO and paymaster.
The Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC) expressed its shock at the extent of ELM contract management incompetence on the meter replacement issue. CEO, Klippies Kritzinger, urged the Provincial Government to make an ELM report on the meter replacement issue public for “full scrutiny” and to restore trust in local government. “The GTCoC believes officials such as Nkoane and Dyakala must be held accountable for what they do or for what they neglect to do. It is clear that gross dereliction of duty has taken place at the highest levels in ELM, but still we don’t even know the full extent of it, let alone see them being held accountable,” said Kritzinger and added that Dyakala and Nkoane should have anticipated the crisis
and made handover arrangements.
Independent experts have also compiled reports on the meter issue but are waiting to see if Nkoane included the transitional arrangement costs or even existence into his report to Province. On terminating the agreement, which was not formally signed despite already paying more than R3
million to BXCSA, Dyakala said, “Hence we stopped payments we made under duress and declared them irregular expenditure,” Dyakala told MooiVaal Media this week. He refused to clarify what was meant by “under duress” or why adequate planning by ELM management was not
done well before the BXCSA contract ended. Mooivaal Media established that ELM only approached BXCSA to develop a transitional process the week after the smart meter contract ended several months ago. It has now also emerged that if ELM had continued with the transitional arrangement
– irregular or not – the entire crisis could have been averted by BXCSA “pulling a single switch”.
Refusal to continue paying on the transitional arrangement thus plunged businesses and residents using the roughly 8 000 smart meters into chaos as ELM started replacing them with antiquated read-only meters.

* BXCSA spokeswoman declined to comment.