On Thursday, the Buffalo City Metro will hold a special council meeting to discuss serious matters concerning the running of the municipality.
Among the items to be dealt with is a report by the graft-busting Special Investigating Unit (SIU), whose representatives will visit the municipality at the council’s request to engage councillors on the findings of its probe into a multimillion-rand temporary housing project.
The damning report on the unit’s investigation implicates six metro officials and two service providers in alleged wrongdoing.
The unit investigated allegations of gross financial misconduct relating to the provision of more than 330 temporary housing structures, at a cost of R21m, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The temporary houses were meant to ease congestion in densely populated informal settlements as a means of containing the spread of the deadly virus.
The SIU report recommended that the metro should institute disciplinary proceedings against the implicated municipal employees.
The report was finalised and handed to the city in 2022.
A year later, then new municipal manager Mxolisi Yawa started taking civil action to recover the money from those implicated.
When the report finally made it to the BCM council for the first time in August this year, the item was seemingly met with resistance from certain councillors — to the point that it had to be withdrawn.
Instead, it was decided that the SIU would be requested to answer councillors’ questions on the report.
Any move to delay holding officials accountable should be viewed as a betrayal of the city’s ratepayers and the poor, who long for better services.
It boggles the mind that the people who are charged with overseeing our finances and ensuring that funds are spent correctly are dragging their feet in holding officials accountable.
And it’s disheartening that the officials implicated in the report continue to represent the city on official business and are yet to be held to account — more than two years after the city was alerted to their alleged wrongdoing.
Instead of wasting the SIU’s time by summoning it to a council meeting, the city should have moved with speed to deal with the implicated officials.
The municipality itself should have picked up the wrongdoing even before the SIU because its own funds were allegedly misspent.
BCM, which is struggling financially, needs to be far more decisive in dealing with maladministration.
Thursday’s meeting must not be used to protect the officials concerned but should resolve to take harsh action against anyone implicated in corruption, including possibly firing those in the wrong.
Any move to delay holding officials accountable should be viewed as a betrayal of the city’s ratepayers and the poor, who long for better services.
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