Editor – I am truly amazed and even shocked that no one in Ladysmith is prepared to stand up for what is right, as the municipal purse is looted every day.
I am truly proud that my husband was the Town Clerk for 25 years, with an exemplary record. Good people, where are the honourable people in our beautiful town that is falling to ruin, and where are the attorneys, accountants, government workers and other professionals who can change what is taking place?
Think about the following:
1. The new MEC for CoGTA, Mr Sipho Hlomuka, is from Ladysmith and he was the head of the ANC Regional Committee, and it was during his time that he deployed so many ANC cadres into the municipality. More than 60 per cent of the budget goes into paying salaries, but there is no money to fix an ordinary pothole.
2. The wife of the Speaker of Council, Hlengiwe Winnie Gloria Ngubane from Roosboom, was deployed to work in the Operation Sukuma Sakhe Section as Senior Citizen / Disability Clerk, as we are told she did not take up the appointment. Is she a ghost worker? And yet Executive Director of Corporate Services Mrs PS Mnataka has extended her contract for another six months.
3. According to hard-pressed caretakers at the municipal halls, an official from the ANC office was appointed to manage them, but she still remains at the ANC offices on Murchison Street.
4. Imagine calling a kettle another name? Mdeni Nxumalo from the Electricity Department, together with another official from the Finance Department, were arrested for theft of a transformer valued around R3.5 million. This was then sold to a local scrap dealer. The finance person who was in charge of assets resigned and according to insiders, Mr Nxumalo is part of the task team working on corruption matters in the municipality.
5. A bigger shock, according to certain aggrieved municipal employees, is that there is a desperate attempt to remove the transformer from the Asset Register.
6. NERSA has no knowledge that the Basic Electricity Connection of R100 per month and increasing the electricity deposits two and half times more was really to force people to move to prepaid meters and in fact, such tariffs cost more than the conventional meters.
I am a proud resident of Ladysmith and will fight against corruption, theft, fraud and wasteful expenditure. Are there others who will join our crusade to identify and expose the skulduggery in our midst?
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