Durban’s critical Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) was left inquorate after an ANC Councillor failed to meet his duty to attend the meeting.
A presentation from the Auditor General’s office, the City Integrity and Investigations Unit and supply chain discussions have now all been delayed.
Designed specifically to interrogate irregular spending, corruption and overspending – MPAC has now had to postpone the meeting following the ANC failure to attend.
Senior officials from the municipality and the Auditor Generals office wasted time waiting for a councillor who confirmed he was attending but did not show up. The meeting needed just one more councillor to form a quorum and not a single ANC councillor was in attendance.
The MPAC committee has a hard time getting officials and the city Manager to take the business of the committee seriously. When we do finally have attendance from officials then committee members do not attend this meeting. Among the culprits if City Manager, Musa Mbhele, whom is often unavailable to account to MPAC.
This comes at a time when departments continue to rack up hundreds of millions in overtime – and SCM processes should be streamlined to deal with the devastation of the floods.
The Democratic Alliance will continue to hold the City manager and his administration to account. Legislated committees such as MPAC are a critical buffer and investigative tool the DA will use to unearth mismanagement.