Note to Editors: Find attached soundbites in English by DA North West Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Freddy Sonakile.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in North West calls on the Acting MEC for Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Boitumelo Moiloa, to urgently investigate the Mahikeng Local Municipality’s Absa bank account that was allegedly opened by former Municipal Manager, Thabo Mokwena, without a Council resolution.
It has come to the DA’s attention that the municipality holds two separate bank accounts for residents to pay rates and taxes into, but that payments made to the Absa account do not reflect on the monthly statements sent to residents. As a result, residents are labelled as bad debtors while their accounts ought to be up to date.
We are concerned that funds paid into the second account may be used to further corruption.
After receiving numerous complaints, the DA in Mahikeng wrote to the Municipal Manager, Mike Mokgwamme, to enquire about this matter, which was simply ignored. Several other attempts to get to the bottom of this, fell on deaf ears.
Upon visiting the municipality yesterday, we were informed that a mayoral committee resolution determined that the Absa account should be closed, but that this has not yet been enforced. To date, no notifications have been sent to residents to inform them of the situation and no plans to reconcile their statements with payments made to this account, have been announced.
Acting MEC Moiloa should establish whether the additional bank account is managed in terms of Section 10 of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), how the account was opened, what the current balance is, how payments made will be allocated to each resident’s municipal account, who the signatories of the account are and why the account has not been closed as resolved by the mayoral committee.
Mahikeng Municipality has a regrettable history with bank accounts following its illegal investment in the VBS Mutual Bank previously.The DA will be monitoring the situation closely to ensure the residents of Mahikeng are not prejudiced by this controversial account any further.