Durban — Buoyed by the damning findings of corruption by a forensic investigation firm recently, opposition parties in Umuziwabantu Local Municipality said they would push for the firm’s contract to be extended, so it could investigate other dodgy municipal projects.
DA leader in the municipality Victor Mbatha and the IFP’s Sambo Vezi told the Daily News that they were impressed with the work done by the firm.
They called for the expansion of the company’s scope to further investigate other allegations of corruption.
Mbatha said his party wanted the full implementation of the report’s recommendations and the investigators to continue probing other allegations of corruption.
Vezi echoed Mbatha’s sentiments, saying her party would raise the matter at the next meeting because the previous one had been about the report on four projects.
Vezi said there were other projects that she suspected were ridden with corruption and which should be investigated.
“The initial investigation focused on four projects because of the financial limitations the municipality had.
“Now that the investigation has been completed, we will push for further investigations by the same company because it has done good work,” said Vezi.
She said the IFP was happy that, at last, the report had been tabled.
She added that the party was aware of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s intervention. The minister had written to the mayor, demanding that the report be implemented within 14 days.
Municipal spokesperson Bruce Jalubane said that after the presentation of the report to the council, it was agreed that the parties must be given an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the report.
Within seven days, they would then convene a meeting to deliberate on the findings and recommendations, Jalubane said.
The officials who were fingered in the report would be formally informed after the process had been completed, he added.
The small municipality, which encompasses rural areas under the town of Harding on the lower South Coast, had angered Dlamini Zuma for apparently trying to keep the damning report under wraps. She had then written to mayor Siboniso Zungu to ask him to act on the report.
The 65-page report, which the Daily News has seen, implicates municipal manager West Gumede and other senior officials for allegedly inflating prices in four projects, some of which date from 2017.
One of the findings was that the municipality received a R931 410 quote for furniture from a supplier but awarded the contract to a construction company that charged R2.3 million.
The report found that the price was inflated and that it was irregular to award a contract to a construction company to procure furniture.
Gumede had said he would wait for his employer to inform him about the report.
Daily News