Four instances of "unauthorised, irregular or fruitless and wasteful expenditure" in the Makana Municipality amounting to just over half a million were revealed last Thursday.
Four instances of "unauthorised, irregular or fruitless and wasteful expenditure" in the Makana Municipality amounting to just over half a million were revealed last Thursday.
However, a reliable source says that's just the tip of the iceberg and that they've failed to mention another R900 000 or so that was misspent, bringing the total closer to R1.4 million.
Makana Municipality has paid dead people, one lucky municipal employee got paid twice every month and ratepayers have been footing the private cellphone bills of councillors.
These were among the alarming disclosures at a Finance, Administration, Monitoring and Evaluation (Fame) Portfolio Committee Meeting last week, where a report by Municipal Manager Ntombi Baart listed instances of "unauthorised, irregular or fruitless and wasteful" expenditure as follows:
* From 2008 to 2010, an employee got double salary payments, amounting to R106 878.14. Things eventually caught up with him in October last year when, after a disciplinary enquiry, he was charged with gross dishonesty for failing to inform the municipality of the mistake.
* For two months after he had died, another employee continued to be paid his R9 666.40 salary. The report stated that the municipality continued to pay money into his bank account in April and May last year. The man's family, who’d had access to the account and had drawn the money, later agreed to return it.
* Supply Chain Management procedures were flouted when event organisers Songo Entertainers were paid R100 000 to provide the promotional material for Makana's official 2010 Fifa World Cup Public Viewing Arena and to arrange a closing function attended by VIPs, councillors, local municipal officials and local organising committee members. The proposal was approved by the acting municipal manager at the time, Dabula Njilo.
* Councillors had their private cellphone and 3G card bills paid from the municipality's bank account. While the amount wasn’t disclosed at Thursday’s meeting, a reliable source says it’s around R300 000.
Grocott’s Mail reported in our Friday issue (22 July) that, impressed by an MTN presentation in 2008, some councillors agreed on a package that included 3G cards, laptops and cellphones. But instead of their monthly bills being deducted from their salaries, they were paid directly from municipal funds, without denting the councillors’ pay packets.
Only in May, when their term was about to end, did Baart break the news to them that they’d have to “make arrangements to pay moneys due to the municipality by means of signing an acknowledgement of debt form”. While the portfolio committee resolved to investigate these breaches, and Baart said new measures would ensure nothing like this happened again, it’s not going to be that easy for the municipality to shrug them off as a few isolated incidents – because it seems they’re barely half the story.
Documents in the possession of Grocott's Mail reveal other instances of “fruitless or wasteful, irregular and unauthorised expenditure” that have not been mentioned, pushing the total amount to just over R1.4 million.
According to these documents:
* The municipality paid R45 000 to enrol Chief Financial Officer Jackson Ngcelwane in a course, the Certificate Programme in Management Development for Municipal Finance, run by the Wits Business School, but he didn’t attend it.
* The municipality forked out another R45 000 for Baart to attend the same course, but she didn’t.
* The Ubumbano Sport Development Academy was paid R480 000 to conduct soccer-coaching clinics last year, without the correct procurement procedures being followed.
* A person was paid a salary of R30 000 after they’d quit the municipality.
* Overtime payments amounting to just over R247 000 were made to employees whose annual earnings put them above the legal threshold for such payments. According to the source, failure to disclose such anomalies would not only put the municipality on the wrong side of the law, but would also set it up for another damning report from the Auditor General.
It was a requirement of Section 32 of the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003 that such occurrences should be disclosed and rectified, the source said. Thus Baart, as the accounting officer was required by law to report to council all instances of unauthorised, irregular or fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
At last week’s meeting, the Finance, Administration, Monitoring and Evaluation (Fame) Portfolio Committee tasked three councillors – DA councillors, Les Reynolds and Brian Fargher, and ANC Councillor, Thuleka Ngeleza – together with a secretariat deployed by the internal auditors to investigate the misspending that was reported.
Baart said that this would ensure that internal controls were in place to make sure this situation did not occur again.
