The Merafong City Local Municipality is refusing to provide any information about work at a controversial sinkhole in Khutsong.

A municipal contractor started to fill the sinkhole across from Hlanganani Primary School last week. This sinkhole had caved in at the start of December 2021 after sewage had been leaking at the site for some time.

The massive sinkhole has been shrouded in controversy since the Hawks started to investigate criminal allegations that the municipality paid a contractor almost R5m to fix this sinkhole despite the work never being done. The case was opened in October last year.

Although the Herald asked the municipality for more information about the newest repair work no answers were received.

The newspaper did, however, obtain a document with Merafong’s logo on top in which it says that the “refurbishment” of the sinkhole started on March7 and will cost another R6m.

The work at the site is estimated to be completed within a month and the consultant for the project is JMS Projects (Pty) Ltd. According to the document the contractor that will do the work is Jolinkomo. This company has previously done work at other sites in Khutsong such as the fixing of the sinkholes in Sompani Road. The company has also previously done work at the former Anglo Hospital near Wedela during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This project has since become controversial after the Special Investigation Unit uncovered corruption that led to the firing of government employees involved in it.