By Fiona Gounden
The Democratic Alliance is not going to let the Sheryl Cwele matter rest until proper investigations are completed.
She may have been cleared of charges relating to the misuse of municipal resources after her communications with Tessa Beetge, the Margate woman caught with cocaine worth R3-million in Brazil, but "she will still be investigated by police for her link in the drug-related activities", warned the DA's Doug Rawlins.
Beetge was caught with a 9kg block of cocaine on June 13 last year and is serving an eight-year sentence in the Sao Paulo prison. Cwele, the director of Health and Community Services at the Hibiscus Coast Municipality, was investigated in connection with her e-mail correspondence with Beetge.
Continues Below ↓
This week Rawlins said the DA was following the "Cwele episode" with great interest and they were going to make sure the matter was not swept under the carpet.
"The municipal investigation has been concluded and the findings were presented to the council's executive committee on June 18, saying that she was cleared.
"When this reportback was done in committee it was questioned by not only me but by members of the ANC as well. We are going to follow up the matter quite furiously."
Rawlins said the party would be closely monitoring the police investigation.
"There is a police investigation taking place with regard to the drug-related charges and the parents of Tessa Beetge were the people that approached the SAPS. We will be following up on these investigations.
"The DA locally welcomes any investigation from any lawful body to get to the bottom of these allegations.
"We consider these allegations to be of an extremely serious nature and will continue to monitor all events surrounding them."
Cwele started her sick leave shortly after her link with Beetge was made public. She went on leave on March 16 and thereafter two doctors' notes were given to council saying that her leave should be extended because she was not yet well enough to resume her duties. She returned to work on May 27.
Council spokesperson Simon Soboyisa said the investigators had been appointed to probe the 11 emails exchanged between her and Beetge.
"It was found that they related to international travel arrangements, complaints of no communication or contact, changes to travel arrangements and related delay and prayers, and theological messages. The conclusion of the investigation was that if there was any breach of the policy, then it would have been a minor one which did not necessarily warrant disciplinary action."
Rawlins said the party would be investigating other avenues.
"The municipality's terms of reference were to establish if there was any misuse of council property and not to establish if she used council equipment to deal in drugs. This is what we are going to concentrate on."
At the time municipal manager S'bu Mkhize refused to give further information about what action they would be taking with regard to her long absence. However, Rawlins said the party was now waiting for positive feedback from Mkhize.
"The DA locally has voiced our concern in this matter and was assured by the Municipal Manager that he will co-operate with any law enforcement agency that investigates drug-related charges and hand over any evidence to such agency that might be in the municipality's possession. He will also have to give information about the action that is going to be taken against her."
- This article was originally published on page 11 of The Star on July 04, 2009
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
