Register this about ELM attendance registers!

It has been confirmed that ELM workers are out of control and committing fraud en masse by not filling in daily attendance registers.

This situation has created endemic corruption and a lack of productivity at ELM – with massively-inflated overtime claims by officials at all levels.

The report could now result in the unprecedented situation of all ELM employees technically facing fraud charges as the filling in of daily attendance registers by every employee personally at work is required by Law.

It now emerges the municipality even spams pre-printed attendance registers in many offices, and in many cases, registers are mass-signed only at month-end, according to the explosive report.

This means managers at every level simply do not know on a day-bay-day basis who has come to work or who has completed a day’s work or overtime, a situation exploited by many workers.

The DA report – compiled after intensive oversight visits by DA Councillors Tebogo Thlokwe and Maureen Dosoudil over a year between March 2022 and March 2023 – has been submitted to the office of April Ntuli, ELM’s newly-appointed Municipal Manager.

But Ntuli has not responded to several attempts by Vaalweekblad to contact him directly and through his office. However, Clr Dosoudil said this week that Ntuli’s office had officially confirmed receipt of the report by e-mail last week.

The formal comment was also requested from ELM over the past few weeks but at the time of publication, the municipality had not responded.

Ntuli promised to directly address service delivery capacity issues as a main focus area of his administration and now confronts a major crisis after his appointment in April. Ntuli was already acting in the position for four months before formal confirmation.

Dosoudil and Clr Thlokwe over a year simply went from ELM office to office, building to building, and asked for evidence of the daily attendance register – and then tracked official parking.

“The response was erratic but the majority of employees approached do NOT have access to their register daily, many cannot produce an attendance register.

“In some instances, attendance registers are kept at the office of the supervisor, but even then, the register is only signed at month end. The discipline of signing in and out daily as required by law, does not exist,” says Dosoudil.

Observation of officials at parking areas at ELM Head office was also a strong indicator that officials were not performing due diligence.
“Officials must be at work at 07:45 but if one visits the car park at the main building at 08:00, except for the odd car, the parking area is empty.

“The parking bays fill up gradually during the morning, peaking at about 10:00; however the few attendance registers we were able to access, all indicate that officials are signed in at 08:00,” says Dosoudil.

“The current system is not working and provides too much opportunity for officials to hand in fraudulent attendance registers thus stealing from the ratepayers thus making officials guilty of fraud and theft.

“The Democratic Alliance will ask the new municipal manager to investigate charges of fraud and theft against ALL employees and if it can be proven steps must be taken to recover the ill-gotten gains and possible dismissal,” said Dosoudil.

Dosoudil said the DA will pressure the municipality to institute a biometric clocking system.