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The Democratic Alliance welcomes the move of the Eastern Cape MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Xolile Nqatha, to place the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality under administration in terms of section 139 (1) b of the constitution.

On the 18th of March this year, the DA marched to the Komani Town Hall where a memorandum was presented to the then Mayor, Nokuzola Tolashe, requesting that a full forensic audit be launched into the affairs of the municipality.

During the 2018 financial year, the Auditor-General reported in excess of R1 billion in irregular, unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure and the municipality was forced to sell 44 municipal vehicles in order to service its debt.

The memorandum placed focus on the following areas of concern:

• All financial transactions, including investment accounts, from EMLM and the three entities during amalgamation to determine where all monies flowed to;
• All fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure of EMLM and the three entities with the view of implementing proper consequence management on officials and office bearers responsible for the financial woes of EMLM;
• Complete investigation on all bid adjudication committee appointments of service providers/contractors by current and former entities, as well as a complete audit on projects and the quality thereof; for the period 2015/16 to 2018/19.

Residents have also been receiving faulty rates accounts and in some cases, no rates accounts at all. This has impacted very negatively on the cash flow of this already bankrupt municipality, which in turn has resulted in dramatically reduced service delivery.

We welcome the MEC’s announcement that the entire municipality will fall under administration, including the Finance Directorate and the Human Resources Directorate, and commend him for acting on the DA’s memorandum.

The DA will closely monitor the performance of the municipality going forward.

All the residents of this municipality deserve better services and we will continue in our efforts to get Komani back on track so that all residents can enjoy their right to basic municipal services.

Issued by The DA