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Nkomazi municipal building.
The Mpumalanga Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department has introduced a forensic investigating team at the Nkomazi Municipality at the special council meeting held in KaMdladla on Thursday.
This comes after the municipality was reportedly bankrupt towards the end of the last financial year.
The probe will be also focusing on skills audit.
A team of investigators has been appointed by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) to probe allegations of maladministration and financial mismanagement in the municipality. This after workers downed tools over not being paid some of their benefits, including overtime.
Opposition parties, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Democratic Alliance (DA), in the council have welcome the investigations.
The department has also seconded an acting municipal manager, Oscar Nkosi, to rescue the municipality from its challenges. Nkosi says there are a number of issues that they have discovered within the municipality such as the lack of accountability — thus leading the municipality to the crisis.
“What we have uncovered really is a collapse of internal controls. So in another words we have got a budget that is approved but your expenditure or spending patterns are not in line with accordance to approve the budget. So it is a lack of internal controls and it cuts across this issue that has been going on with staff over the past two weeks now, and it has to do with the fact that there is overtime.”
The workers handed over a memorandum of grievances calling for the removal of the executive mayor during a peaceful march supported by COSATU, SAMWU and IMATU.
Human Settlements and CoGTA MEC Speedy Mashilo says the team will work closely with the acting municipal manager to investigate these issues.
“So that team of forensic experts is here for three months, 90 days, they must present a report to me. They did raise the issue of the skills audit as well and I would look the organgram of the municipality as part of revamping municipality moving forward. So, all these details I would look to them hands forth, where there are hands would open cases against those individuals and they would through the process of the law depending on what we found from the forensic.”
Reports suggest that there are over 300 ghost workers at the Nkomazi Municipality.
