Municipal officials and councillors found guilty of misusing public funds will be strictly dealt with, Matjhabeng executive mayor Serake Leeu warned on Wednesday.
He was reacting to a forensic audit report by the Free State auditor general’s office into alleged irregularities in debt collecting at the Matjhabeng local municipality in 2001 and 2002.
The report on the investigation was tabled in a council meeting on Tuesday.
Leeu said on Wednesday: ”We have to protect the public purse. People have voted us in and we have employed municipal employees to be the trustees of the community’s funds.”
The probe was conducted into the appointment of a debt-collecting company contracted to collect service debt for the former Welkom transitional council (now Matjhabeng) in 2001/02 and the misuse of council manpower and assets for personal gain by officials.
Alleged bribery and kickbacks by officials to undermine internal investigations were also part of the investigation.
The probe found no tender process was used to appoint the debt-collecting company. Irregularities occurred in the payments to the company, putting a question mark over more than R7,9-million paid.
The report also indicates that the appointment of the company had ”no positive effect” on the collection of arrears for the municipality.
”All analytical reviews performed on available data for the period February 2001 to August 2002 indicated that the debt-collecting company had no positive effect,” the report read.
”There were increases in the total debtor balance from just over R200-million in March 2001 to R350-million in October 2001, while the arrears debts followed the same trend. This indicates that a recovery of arrears debts did not occur as agreed upon.”
In regard to bribery and kickbacks by certain officials, the investigation found ”prima facie” evidence that the then town secretary paid an amount of R600 to an employee not to divulge any information to investigators pertaining to the housing project in Virginia.
Releasing the forensic report on Wednesday, Leeu said the municipality follows ”the tune” of Parliament and the provincial legislature in matters pertaining to contraventions of the code of conduct.
”Usually a report of misconduct by a councillor would be tabled in a public meeting … now the same would apply to officials because the issue concerns public money,” Leeu said.
Municipal councils usually handle such issues internally.
Leeu said a committee will study the forensic audit report and make recommendations on how the issues should be handled.
”If the municipality lacks the capacity to handle some issues, we would obviously call on special investigation units to take charge of certain areas,” Leeu said.
The committee has 30 days to make the recommendations. — Sapa