Peter Dickson
In the week the Eastern Cape government launched its anti-corruption forum in Bisho, it emerged that several long-serving Port Elizabeth city councillors stand accused of failing to disclose their interests in companies doing business with the municipality.
Port Elizabeth town clerk Graham Richards told a shocked council executive committee meeting that an undisclosed number of city councillors face suspension or criminal prosecution for improperly profiting from council business.
Mayor Nceba Faku has asked Richards to prepare a detailed report on the allegations, naming the councillors involved, so that the matter could be discussed “in confidence” with municipal officials.
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) regional deputy chair Thobile Ntola said the labour federation had first raised the allegations in relation to the outsourcing of some municipal functions, suggesting that councilors were backing outsourcing in order to profit.
“Some councillors are encouraging outsourcing so that they get contracts through the back door,” Ntola says. Cosatu also says Port Elizabeth’s R420-million arrears in rates and service payment charges can partly be blamed on the “greediness” of some councillors.
At the same council executive committee meeting last week, fierce argument raged between African National Congress councillors when Faku proposed that areas of the city with good payment records be prioritised for new projects and facilities, thus serving as an incentive to pay.
But public scrutiny was the victim again as the committee voted to discuss the matter “at a later date in the absence of the press and public”. No reasons were given.
While in-house debate raged in Port Elizabeth, the provincial government went public in Bisho to announce that 31 Department of Welfare officials had stolen R8,5-million in pension money during the financial year ending in March, while the Department of Health had lost R7-million through monthly salary payments to dead employees and irregular payments to drug suppliers to the Port Elizabeth and Umtata medical depots. An official attached to the Port Elizabeth depot has been suspended pending a month-long audit and investigation.
Health department human resources director Chauke Ngoma said an official in Butterworth was also under investigation for paying dead employees.
“If an employee dies, six months later they ‘raise’ him or her from the dead and they get paid,” Ngoma explained. “The finance department hammers us when we say we have lost so many staff members but our staff expenditure remains the same.”
The provincial anti-corruption forum, unveiled in Bisho this week, is a watchdog and law-enforcement body joining the government and the private sector in ending the Eastern Cape’s corruption scourge. It follows the province’s first anti-corruption summit held in East London last year.