The DA in uMgungundlovu District has written to the Municipal Manager, Nosipho Mkhize to request that she provides feedback on the R11 million on irregular expenditure reported by the Auditor General during the latest Audit (view letter here).
The expenditure relates to illegal extensions of contracts. This amount is mostly resulting from three big contractors, two of which have previously been in the press for alleged fraudulent activity.
Our concern is that the normal reporting and legislative processes did not pick up on these irregularities and report on the deviations from supply chain legalization. Why would certain contracts extend way beyond the scope and budget, unchecked? This is the type of lack of control that allows corruption to flourish.
Local government legislation demands that all expenditure that is unauthorised (not budgeted for), irregular (not as for legislative processes), wasteful (not value received) or fruitless, be reported monthly to various committees to perform oversight, including the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC). In this case, none of the R11m in irregular expenditure was reported for oversight.
This is a shocking failure in administration during the last financial year. It raises very serious concerns at the uMgungundlovu district municipality.
This is while no budget is provided for the 10 housing projects that are stalled due to lack of bulk water supply, service delivery is severely hindered by the inability to pay standby plumbers. It is concerning that internal processes, either willfully, or by negligence do not pick up these major irregularities.