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Dysfunctional ELM faces ‘perfect storm’ on smart meters
ELM’s grossly negligent ending of its smart meter programme - once a money-spinner and the best of its kind in Gauteng - came back to haunt it in full force last week, with a perfect storm of crushing legal defeats and a harsh Parliamentary Portfolio Committee indictment of its incompetence. And the drama continues:
The Johannesburg High Court last Thursday rejected ELM’s urgent application to unfreeze its primary bank account, attached earlier this month after a record R492 million default judgment in favour of its former smart meter service provider BXCSA.
And the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) also visited Emfuleni last week, slammed ELM as “dysfunctional” and singled out the negligent handling of the smart meter programme for harsh criticism.
Last week ELM’s Communication Manager Stanley Gaba also announced his resignation citing a toxic management environment – his leaving at the end of November was described by organised business as another “blow to transparent governance at ELM”.
In another new development, it was established a key court hearing scheduled for March 2021 by ELM on the legality of the smart meter programme has also been scrapped from the roll – by ELM’s own legal team and apparently without the knowledge of top management.
ELM’s response to a recent default judgment awarding smart meter service provider BXCSA R492 million was that it would seek a rescission of the court decision and that the legality of the contract would only be legally tested next year.
Legal experts believe ELM would now find it “extraordinarily difficult” to have the envisaged 31 March 2021 matter restored to the court roll as its “hugely incompetent and expensive” legal team had now created a legal minefield for itself.
ELM has since also approached the Judge President in Pretoria after the Johannesburg High Court last week rejected its urgent application to unfreeze its primary Standard Bank account.
Yet CFO Andile Dyakala, whose role in ending with former acting Municipal Manager Oupa Nkoane the smart meter programme in June last year without any contingency planning whatsoever, has cost the municipality almost R300 million in lost revenue and destroyed the ailing municipality’s most lucrative revenue stream, remains unsuspended.
– guest writer Craig Kotze
