I’m still in charge, says axed mayor

PAUL KIRK

UMSUNDUZI - uMsunduzi municipal manager Rob Haswell and mayor Zanele Hlatshwayo are no longer in charge of the city – with the mayor’s photographs even removed from the mayoral parlour yesterday.

However, the embattled mayor insisted she is still in charge and would soon be back in office.

The pair, as well as the entire municipality, have been stripped of all powers by the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature who stepped in after finding KwaZulu-Natal’s second largest city was bankrupt.

But despite this and having lost hundreds of millions of rands the entire municipality, including its councillors, continue to draw salaries. From being in a healthy financial status in the 2007/2008 financial year, the city found itself unable to pay its debts this year – having been fleeced by alleged massively inflated overtime claims and irregular tenders which were awarded without any cash being available to finance them.

Auditors sent in by the provincial government also found that Haswell and Hlathswayo had allegedly failed to account for hundreds of millions of rands in revenue.

As calls for Haswell and Hlathshwayo to be sacked and stripped of their salaries were made The Citizen discovered Haswell had left the city over health issues. Calls to his home were met by a domestic servant saying he had gone on holiday to cure very bad flu. He has been on sick leave since news of the city’s financial state first broke last month. Hlathswayo yesterday blamed Haswell for the financial woes of the city.

She said the financial woes had been worsened by Haswell constantly taking sick leave when asked to explain why the city finances were in tatters. She said she would soon be back in office and said she had only removed personal effects from the mayoral parlour as she was tidying up the area and wanted to give provincial staff more space to work in. Overtime claims for January alone reveal that many municipal workers claimed to work more than 12 hours overtime every day of the month, including weekends.