Motheo’
Justin Arenstein
MPUMALANGA Housing Board members insist this week that they were never briefed about Motheo Construction’s controversial R185-million housing project.
A National Party board member, Jakkie van Heerden, conceded that he had missed one board meeting in January where Saths Moodley – the former head of the province’s housing board – claims the scheme was discussed and approved.
But he added that, according to minutes of the meeting, there had not been a quorum.
“The only thing contained in the minutes is that the executive committee wanted approval to allocate various stands to a rural developer,” Van Heerden said. “There was a description of the stands but no detail on Motheo or the scheme itself.”
He said even when board members heard of the scheme, they had been unable to ask for details about it because their last three meetings had not had quorums.
Motheo Construction is at the centre of the Mpumalanga rural housing scheme row linked to the sudden departure of Billy Cobbett as director general of the national Housing Department.
The chairman of Mpumalanga’s standing select committee on housing, Hein Mentz, accused the housing MEC, Craig Padayachee, of misinforming the committee about Motheo last week.
“We don’t know whether he consciously lied to us, whether he was misinformed or whether he simply did not know what was going on in his department, but he definitely didn’t give us the true facts on Motheo,” Mentz said.
Among the “errors” Padayachee made while testifying before the committee was his insistence that the Motheo scheme had been formally approved by the housing board on February 20.
“There was never a meeting on February 20 so it couldn’t have been approved as he insisted, but this was just one of a string of such errors. There were just too many questions put to the department’s heads that could not be answered,” Mentz said.
These included an annual report which did not balance by R4,5-million. Mentz said officials had to “scramble” for days before discovering that the funds were in a developer’s trust account.
A second select committee session will be held later this month. – African Eye News Service