Note to Editors: Please find the attached soundbite in English from the DA Councillor,Shaun Sesana.
The Democratic Alliance calls for a full forensic investigation into the City of Matlosana’s financial affairs following revelations that the municipality is among the top five highest irregular spenders and that a forensic investigations company allegedly colluded to remove critical tender documents.
Since 2011 the municipality has incurred a total of R4.2 Billion in unauthorised irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure that cannot be accounted for.
Last Friday the City of Matlosana was called to account before the Select Committee on Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs in Parliament for being among the top five highest irregular spenders in the country.
The municipality was represented by the Executive Mayor Mateu Kgaile, the Municipal Manager (MM) Roger Nkhumise, the Acting Chief Financial Officer, Tsaone Sekgala and the Chairperson of MPAC, Piet Bogatsu.
The municipality was responding to the reasons why irregular expenditure from prior years was not investigated. To answer the question the MM revealed that critical tender documents that could have assisted in audit and subsequent investigations were removed by a forensic investigations company, Open Water, which was hired by the Provincial Finance, Economy and Development department to investigate financial irregularities in the municipality.
The department has never formerly forwarded the outcome of the investigation to the City of Matlosana, although a summarised version has been made available to councillors without the provincial department’s official cover letter or any recommendation. As a result, the council has not been able to express itself on it and subsequently disregarded it following a recommendation from the MPAC.
The MM further revealed that he believes that Open Water colluded to make documents disappear and he could not account for the irregular expenditure.
It is concerning that the Select Committee of COGHSTA is chaired by former Matlosana Mayor and now a Member of Parliament, China Dodovu. Open Water was contracted to investigate financial irregularities, some of which occurred while Dodovu was still Mayor.
The DA calls for a full-scale investigation from an independent forensic investigations company to account for the irregular expenditure. The investigation must also include Open Water’s alleged collusion to remove critical tender documents.
The people of Matlosana are suffering without basic services whilst the ANC continues to loot money meant for service delivery. We need a government that will be transparent in the management of finances and also able to account for all expenditure incurred.
Since the DA took over running the Western Cape in 2009, the province continues to lead the way by maintaining clean municipal audits and ensuring speedy service delivery.