During today's oversight visit that the Parliamentary Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) paid to the Matlosana Municipality (Klerksdorp, Orkney, Stilfontein and Hartbeestfontein), the FF Plus submitted documents to the Committee indicating large-scale fraud and corruption at the local fresh produce market. The market is managed by the Municipality.
The FF Plus had requested the Auditor-General (AG) in February 2021 to urgently investigate the dealings at the market after the party received numerous complaints about alleged financial mismanagement.
The documents indicate that a senior official allegedly created a customer market account for himself, he then credited the account with R1,5 million and proceeded to withdraw nearly the full amount in cash from the cashiers at the market.
The FF Plus also lodged a complaint with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) and supplied the Unit with, among other things, the documents and the implicated official's name.
Further related information, gleaned by the party from reliable sources, paints a very clear picture of the scope of a sophisticated fraud and corruption network functioning at the market. This information was also submitted to the SIU.
During the Committee meeting, the FF Plus insisted that the MEC for Finance in the North West, Matlepula Rosho, and the MEC for Local government, Mmoloki Chailwe, must immediately look into the bookkeeping and financial management of the market to prevent any further fraud and corruption from taking place there.
The FF Plus also insisted that appropriate steps must be taken against the municipal managers who apparently failed to fulfil their managerial responsibilities, despite the sporadic complaints about mismanagement at the market that have been received since 2016.
It is an absolute shame that fraud and corruption are seemingly allowed to continue even though the Municipality has been under investigation by The Hawks since December 2020.
This incident proves that deployed cadres and politicians' appetite for fraud, corruption and mismanagement has not decreased in the least. This cancer must be eradicated from local government once and for all. The actions of these corrupt officials and their political supporters are the root cause of the decline of service delivery that affects communities countrywide.
The FF Plus will closely monitor the progress of the investigations and will continue to put pressure on all levels of government to ensure that the offenders are brought to book.
Communities countrywide must stand up and stand together in the elections scheduled to take place on the 27th of October so that the ANC can be removed from local governments all over the country. The decline must be brought to an end.
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