We appeal to the Minister

Doug Grewar, Chairman, AbaQulusi Residents Association, writes:-

THE ACTING Municipal Manager of our AbaQulusi Local Municipality (ALM) in December 2014, signed a three year contract with “Aqua Transport and Plant Hire Pty Ltd” of Pinetown, for R24,914,365.74 for the hire of four graders.

According to our information this was not authorized by the council or its executive committee, so who authorized this expenditure of ratepayers’ money?

There are not enough dirt roads in the AbaQulusi municipal area to justify the hire of four graders, especially when the ALM’s own graders are standing unused.

The hourly rate is not specified in the contract which is strange. We hear it is R950 per hour including fuel and operator. Why are graders hired from a contractor from Pinetown at this high rate when there are local contractors who can supply graders at far cheaper prices?

Why was the contract not made on engine hours so only hours worked are paid for?

The ALM will be charged for nine hours a day even if there is no work and the machine is standing. We have reports of one of the hired graders standing idle at Louwsburg police station for one week. Where the other three are is anybody’s guess.

Who is responsible for giving these graders their daily tasks and checking that they are done correctly?

Why must the ratepayers be charged for machines that just stand doing nothing?

As usual our municipality is operating under a cloak of secrecy leading us to suspect corruption.

This grader scandal is just one of many, such as the nearly R1.5 million paid out in January for mostly fraudulent overtime to council employees some of whom even claim overtime while on leave.

We appeal to the Provincial Minister of COGTA Ms Dube to please try to investigate this matter.

We also appeal to the National Minister of COGTA Mr Pravin Gordhan to remove our AbaQulusi Local Municipal Council and replace it with an administrator, who must set up a full scale forensic audit into all the ALM’s operations.