POLITICS

ANC must explain cancelled R2.1 million conference – Zwakele Mncwango

DA wants Mayor and City officials who organised the event to be held accountable for wasteful expenditure

ANC in eThekwini must explain cancelled R2.1 million conference

21 June 2017

On Monday, the DA requested the City Manager of eThekwini Municipality, Sipho Nzuza, to explain to the municipality's executive council why the R2.1 million Social Cohesion conference that was supposed to take place on Monday was inexplicably cancelled at the last minute?

However, the DA's request was turned down by the ANC, raising further suspicion that the conference was indeed cancelled for political reasons.

The DA remains adamant to determine the reason for the cancellation of the conference and also how much money was wasted in the process.

We therefore wrote to the MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Nomusa Dube-Ncube today, requesting that she investigates the circumstances that led to the cancellation of the conference and also establish how the money was spent, on which expenditure items and how the money will be recovered after the late cancellation which left almost 400 delegates stranded.

The MEC should investigate if there was a breach of Finance Management Act, especially as it relates to S32(c) (d) and subsection (3) which deals with irregular and wasteful expenditure in municipalities.

We believe that the Mayor and City officials who organised this event must be held accountable for wasteful expenditure and be compelled to recover the total cost of the conference.

We have been reliably informed that an email was sent by Deputy City Manager Musa Gumede to the Head of Parks, Recreation and Culture Head, Thembinkosi Ngcobo on Monday the 19th of June , at 10:24 am to be exact, informing him to cancel the conference on the very same day it was meant to commence

It is without a doubt that this was an unreasonable request and in fact a negligent request given to Ngcobo to cancel the conference.

By then, taxpayers’ money had already been spent in hiring the conference venue, service providers and catering.

The latest waste is another clear reason why EThekwini Municipality is falling apart under the current administration. Mayor Zandile Gumede and her hangers-on are lurching from one crisis to another without any due regard to their core mandate – which is service delivery.

We will hold MEC Dube to the commitment she made on the 13th of April while meeting communities in Durban. In this meeting, she said “Mayors and Municipal Managers to ensure that municipalities’ finances are properly managed and accounted for and that municipalities themselves are fully capacitated. As political and administrative heads of your municipalities, you must ensure that the right people are in the right positions”

The MEC has been presented with an opportunity to prove that she is not all talk and no action. We call on her to treat this situation with the seriousness and urgency it deserves and provide answers to the people of eThekwini. This incident can not be swept under the carpet.

Issued by Zwakele Mncwango, DA KZN Leader, 21 June 2017