Internal squabbling seems to be the latest stumbling block in the way of the municipality finding a new acting Chief Financial Officer, and Makana has been without a CFO since the last one was suspended a year ago.
Internal squabbling seems to be the latest stumbling block in the way of the municipality finding a new acting Chief Financial Officer, and Makana has been without a CFO since the last one was suspended a year ago.
Municipal Manager Ntombi Baart is refusing to advise the municipality's council on who should succeed the latest acting CFO Marius Crous, whose contract expired on Wednesday this week.
According to the Municipal Structures Act, the municipal manager is the one who should advise the council in terms of appointing a person to act as CFO. Baart's reason for refusing, she claimed, was that she had already advised the council on this matter, but her suggestion was ignored. “I'm not quite sure how am I expected to advise a council that has disregarded my advice… The council has ignored my advice so it's up to the council to decide what to do,” she said.
When Grocott's Mail attempted to find out why Baart's original advise was not accepted by the council, we were referred to the Mayor by the municipal spokesperson, but the Mayor was unavailable for comment at the time of going to print. In a special council meeting on Wednesday, DA councillor Les Reynolds said he warned the council last year already that the empty CFO position would become a problem, but the Mayor had responded by saying that everything would be sorted out by January.
“We are now going into May and it's not fine,” he said. DA councillor Brian Fargher proposed that Crous should continue as the acting CFO, and the proposal was seconded by Reynolds. A decision was taken at the meeting to come up with a list of names of people who could fill the position of the acting CFO.
The municipality has relied on acting CFOs since the suspension of Jackson Ngcelwane in May last year, whose disciplinary hearing is still pending. Namhla Dlulane was sent by the Department of Local Government last year for technical support in Ngcelwane's absence, but she too was suspended before her two-month contract expired.
