With debt mounting and revenue dwindling, ELM still rotated acting Municipal Managers and still has not held those officials responsible for abysmal service delivery accountable, said Klippies Kritzinger, CEO of the Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce.
“Council is clearly only working to pay its own salary and not for the people of Emfuleni,”said Kritzinger. Kritzinger said ELM Council and its elected representatives waged personal vendettas against selected officials – such as now-suspended Municipal Manager Lucky Leseane – but left an utterly incompetent and unfit CFO in place.
“ELM was now also mediating the record R499 million default judgment awarded former smart meter service provider BXCSA after spending huge amounts on legal fees for a rescission and other futile and fruitless legal steps.
“We support settling this matter – and indeed even a return of BXCSA – because ELM was clearly wrong and the negligence and incompetence of senior officials simply cancelling the project has led reportedly to revenue and infrastructure losses of now almost R1 billion,”Kritzinger said.
Those responsible for the smart meter debacle faced no real steps from ELM council, which had clearly colluded with former acting Municipal Manager Oupa Nkoane and present CFO Andile Dyakala to prevent consequence management against them.
Dyakala still has several outstanding internal investigations against him and even a court protection order for gender abuse of a former female acting Mayor.
Nkoane was also personally liable for millions of unauthorised expenditure on a ELM security contract but council took no steps to recover the money. Instead they suspended Leseane on spurious grounds.
