POLOKWANE – During a recent meeting of the Polokwane municipal council, the DA vehemently opposed a resolution to write-off unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful (UIFW) expenditure in excess of R34m.
The Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) submitted a report to council to request the write off of the money which included R7m inherited from the disestablished Aganang Municipality, even though no proof of records other than the UIFW register was submitted to MPAC.
Included in the report were findings that no proof of bid advertisements and competitive bidding processes were followed.
The council did, however, approve the adoption of the recommendations.
DA councillor in the municipality, Jacques Joubert said that it is a matter of concern that the same accounting officer of the disestablished Aganang Municipality is now the accounting officer of Capricorn District Municipality, and was also previously employed by Polokwane Municipality.
“Some of the transgressions with regard to the irregular expenditure at Polokwane Municipality include a case of fraudulent documents submitted with bid documents, extensions of scope and extensions of time without approval,” Joubert said.
Further to the MPAC report, there was a separate report to write off over R19m in irregular expenditure and nearly R500 000 in fruitless and wasteful expenditure of Polokwane Housing Association (PHA), according to Joubert.
“The DA was the only party that voted against the adoption of both these write off reports as we cannot approve reports where adequate consequence management has not been duly enforced. We believe more must be done to indicate that the municipality is serious about transparency and enforcing supply chain processes. To this day we await the follow up report with regards to what further steps were taken against implicated officials other than the two suspended officials as highlighted through the Bowman Gilfillan report of April 2023,” Joubert said and added that the DA eagerly awaits more independent investigation reports to be submitted to council, including the Mankweng Stadium report and will continue to be the voice of voters to advocate for full transparency and consequence management.
Spokesperson for the municipality, Thipa Selala responded that it is unfortunate that the DA wants the community to believe that the resolution was taken without any consideration of corrective measures and consequence management being enforced.
“The council decision does not nullify any disciplinary hearings underway and council resolved that a progress report on the implementation of consequence management and disciplinary hearings against officials be provided and in cases where there are no financial losses, services were rendered and the SCM processes were contravened, disciplinary action must be applied. Council also resolved that, in cases of financial misconduct, the matters be referred to the Financial Misconduct Board and that measures in place to prevent the recurrence of irregularities must be adhered to,” Selala said.
According to Selala, expenditures related to the PHA irregular expenditure is from the 2012/13 financial year and not the current one.
“The other amount on fruitless and wasteful expenditure is based on interest charged by Eskom due to late payment of the account during the Covid-19 pandemic and the money is irrecoverable,” Selala stated and added that some of the reasons for council’s decision to write off the expenditures is because there were no findings of any financial loss to the entity and that the entity has since put in place internal control measures to stop irregular expenditure, that some of the employees affected have undergone disciplinary process and other matters were reported to the police.
“Regarding the Bowmans report, some of the reports have already served in council and they were still busy with finalising the last investigations and the report thereof will soon serve in council with recommendations,” he concluded.
